


Down Darker and Darker Stairs

by rei_c



Series: Five Districts, Five Drugs [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood Bond, Deus Ex Machina, Drug Use, Insanity, M/M, Mild Gore, Mythology - Freeform, Stanford Era, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-11
Updated: 2007-02-15
Packaged: 2018-06-10 02:15:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6933946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rei_c/pseuds/rei_c
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean goes to pick Sam up from Stanford and ends up finding more than he bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

With traffic on Embarcadero behind him, Dean calls the registrar's office and says he works for a law firm he picked out of the San Francisco phone book not five minutes before, says that a "Samuel Winchester's applied for a job and lists Stanford as his current enrollment. It's just procedure, background checks, you know how it goes," and the woman on the other end of the phone sighs in agreement. He can hear her clicking away at a computer, hears her make a noise that only ever accompanies frowns.

"I'm sorry. Mr. Winchester was a student here, but he resigned his scholarship and transferred out four semesters ago. If you give me just one second," she says, and now Dean's not breathing. "Yes, we sent a transcript to the City College of San Francisco at that time." 

Dean exhales, flirts a bit more with the woman, and hangs up, muttering, "I am _so_ going to kill you when I track you down."

In the end, it's not that hard.

\-- 

He gets a motel as far away from the water as he can without leaving Palo Alto; there are trees in the distance, some type of preserve a few miles away, and as Dean’s taking his duffel and weapons out of the Impala’s trunk, he hears howling travel through the air. 

“Oh, you have _got_ to be fucking with me,” he mutters, ignoring the slightly scandalised look of a woman passing, maybe a co-ed’s mother or grandmother here for whatever type of game the check-in clerk was talking about. 

Dean knows the sound of those howls, knows what it means without having to look up at the sky to check the moon. Deeper and lower than regular wolves, longer and throatier than wild dogs, which means werewolves, just when he thought maybe he’d get the chance to stay in one night, clean the guns and sharpen the knives, take a long hot shower, actually get some sleep for once. 

He sighs, drops his things in the motel room, and then packs up some guns loaded with silver-shot, tucks silver knives into his boots and pockets, and jumps back in his car, headed for the wolves.

\--

There’s a sign in the dirt parking lot, wooden posts with a wooden board nailed across them, ‘Arastradero Preserve’ carved in to the board and highlighted in yellow paint. Dean stops the car, shuts the Impala off, and gets out, looking at the tree-covered hills blocking the sky from view. His spine tingles, instinct after all these years, and he drops his keys in his back pocket, pulls his collar up against his neck, and sets off into the trees. 

It’s dark and quiet, except when a howl starts the pack off or there’s the scream of a frightened animal. He’s getting closer, has to take it slow, climbs up a few trees when his neck itches like something’s watching him, but the next time one of the wolves howls, he’s close enough to grimace at the ear-grating noise. Another howl, then, but this one’s cut off mid-sound, and Dean freezes, because that’s just not normal. 

Dean crouches, then moves forward cautiously, one foot in front of the other, careful where he’s stepping. He’s looking around, guns in his hands, and when he looks in front of him again, there’s a pair of gleaming golden eyes staring back at him from across a worn path in the dirt. He doesn’t even have enough time to think before the wolf’s leaping and Dean’s gun is recoiling in his hand. The wolf collapses in the middle of the path, dropped like a stone and not moving, but the shot’s startled the other wolves and the entire pack starts howling. 

He moves, not bothering to be quiet this time, because the pack will find the fallen wolf and go blood-crazed. From the sound of the howls canting up into the night sky, there’s a good dozen of them, maybe more. All Dean can think is that this is definitely not good, and at this rate, he’ll be lucky to get out of the preserve without running across another one of the pack. 

He gets about a mile before the wolves’ cries change. They’d hit crazed a minute after Dean had started running, but now they’re yipping and calling, communicating with each other to try and track down their packmate’s killer, and from the sounds of things, they’re circling around Dean, blocking off his escape, travelling over the terrain on four feet easier than Dean is on two.

Dean looks up, finds a tree and climbs it, pulls out his guns and knives and gets ready to shoot the first thing that moves. 

Nothing, but then he hears a howl close to him, maybe a few yards away, and tenses, points his gun in the direction of the noise. One wolf comes out of the brush and Dean aims, pulls the trigger, gets a headshot that leaves the wolf dead. The noise, though, attracts the rest of the pack, and as much as Dean would love to just kill the rest of them off, something about this is different. 

The pack’s circling the tree he’s in, but they keep looking around, as if they’re expecting someone or something else. On top of that, there’s only seven, and he could’ve sworn he heard more before. 

He shoots again, and then there’s a blur of movement as two of the remaining six wolves break off from the tree and start howling as they crash into the brush. Dean waits, watches the four wolves around his tree put their tails down, start whimpering. One of the wolves out-of-sight squeals and the other, Dean thinks, is cut off mid-howl. 

Dean’s worried now, because someone else is hunting the wolves, or something, and it’s never good to encroach on another hunter’s territory, _really_ never good to be unprepared for another supernatural monster. He’s just about ready to shoot the remaining four wolves dead when there’s a rustle in the brush and the wolves start to whine in what sounds like terror. 

A person comes walking up, and Dean’s about ready to shout, tell him to leave, get out, but the person drops to his knees, looks at the wolves, and snarls, as clear a challenge as a person could ever make. Dean can only watch in disbelief as the four wolves tackle, leaping as one, and the person rolls, sliding out of the way, leaving a knife in his wake that slits one of the wolves’ throat. 

The other three go crazy, and they attack the man until all Dean can see is fur flying every which way, hints of skin and glances of teeth, but one wolf ends up skidding away from the melee, dead, another gets thrown into a tree and slides down without a noise, missing part of its mouth, and the man fights the last wolf, ends up on it’s back, straddling the beast, yanking up it’s head and drawing a knife across it’s throat. 

It doesn’t look like he’s even out of breath, when the man stands, wipes the blood off of his knife and on to the wolf’s fur. 

“It’s safe to come down now, Dean,” the man calls out, looking straight up at Dean, and Dean’s caught in the manic, feral green cat’s-eyes staring at him. 

“Sam,” he murmurs, then calls out, “Sam?” as he jumps down, hits the ground with a muttered “Oof” and tucks the guns into his jeans, stepping warily around the wolves. He gets a good look at Sam, the blood staining Sam’s skin and clothes, the glazed look in Sam’s eyes, the way Sam’s foot is tapping against the ground like he has to be moving now, and can’t stop the words from tumbling out. “Jesus, Sam, you’re. Damn it, you should know better than that! Did any of them bite you?” 

The look Sam gives him in return could almost be classified as lazy, if it didn’t seem so hyped up, so tense and strung out. 

“I’m fine, fine, fine,” Sam says, then starts laughing. “You owe me, though. Had two dozen wolves out here, none of them new, and they almost had you. You got two, I got twenty-two, how’s that for numbers?”

Dean frowns, steps closer to Sam, studies the glitter in Sam’s eyes and the way those pupils are darting around, every which way, as if Sam’s got to keep moving, got to keep watching out for potential threats. 

“I got three,” Dean says, “one on the path, two here.” 

Sam shakes his head, grins with his lips pressed together, steps closer. “Didn’t finish the kill, Dean, tsk, tsk. The one on the path was still alive, still breathing, ready to shift and heal and start all over,” Sam says, tone half speech, half song, tracing out rhythms and a strange, discordant melody. 

“Sam,” Dean begins, but then Sam cocks his head and holds up one finger for silence. 

Dean listens, frowns, opens his mouth, but then he hears it, hears something ruffling further away. He takes out his gun and looks at Sam, feels the blood drain from his face. Sam’s smiling, teeth bright in the darkness, and he’s nodding, bloodstained curls bouncing around his head. 

“Something else, something else to find and hunt, you stay here,” Sam murmurs, and then he’s gone. 

Gone, just like that. 

Dean’s heart is hammering in his chest as shivers run down his spine. The way Sam was moving, the way he left, so quickly, so silently, disappearing into the darkness. It’s not natural, not at all _right_ , and it’s worrying. He wants to go after Sam, try to keep his little brother safe, but if Sam was telling the truth and he did hunt the pack down, twenty-two wolves just with a knife, then maybe Dean should listen, stay here. He thinks about it for a minute, long seconds of silence, just that faint hint of movement wafting like smoke through the trees, and then he takes off, trying to track his brother by the blood still falling off of Sam’s clothes. 

It’s an impossible task. Dean hadn’t grabbed a flashlight before running out here, depending on the light from the full moon, but the thin strands of silver filtering through the trees aren’t enough to see blood drops on leaves or against dirt. Still, Dean tracks his brother using everything John’s taught him over the years and ends up nearly tripping over Sam, his brother crouched behind a row of wild bushes, looking into a small, natural clearing. 

Before Dean can look at what Sam’s watching, Sam’s hand is over his mouth, Sam’s lips close to his ear. 

“Stay here, Dean,” Sam murmurs under his breath, and pushes Dean down to a kneeling position, letting Dean shift to get rocks out from under his knees but not letting Dean stand up. Sam presses one finger to Dean’s lips, says, “Shhh,” and darts into the clearing. 

Dean’s eyes follow, see a man in the break between the trees who looks old, ancient, standing over the body of a fallen wolf. The wolf’s throat was slit, Dean can see the blood still gleaming on the fur, and the man, a Native American, looks up from the carcass to Sam, who’s tapping one foot and humming. 

The man steps toward Sam, who skitters out of the way, shaking his head. 

“No, no, no,” Sam says, then sings with a smile on his face. “No, no, no. Can’t take me, I’m not dead, not me, not dead, no, no, Kandjidji.” 

The man pauses, lets his eyes follow Sam’s laughing movements, and asks, “Then why are you here, young hunter?” 

“Heard you, yes, I heard you,” Sam says, tossing his knife in the air once, catching it when it comes down blade-first. “Heard you over the kelpies, noisy things,” he adds, as if in confidence. “Thought you were the bear-spirit, I did, but no, just the chief.”

Dean has no idea what’s going on, but hearing Sam talk in that sing-song tone sends shivers up and down his spine. It almost sounds like Sam’s possessed, and the look in his eyes, the way he’s holding himself, only add to that, especially when Sam grinds his teeth for a split-second, stops, does it again. 

“They are your kill,” the man finally says, and steps away from the dead wolf. “Your claim was first.” 

Sam laughs, tilts his head back and laughs, the noise spiralling straight up into the air. It goes on for a few seconds, but then Sam stops, like flicking a switch, and he looks straight at the man, says, “I rescind my claim,” as if he’s finally lucid, finally making sense. 

Dean stares, takes in the moment of absolute stillness that creeps over Sam’s body, swallows hard at the intensity he sees in Sam’s eyes, but then the moment passes and Sam’s laughing, eyes fragmented, muscles tensing, relaxing. 

“Take them, take them, take them,” Sam says between laughs, and the man, the chief, nods once, disappears into the moonlight along with the carcass. 

Dean doesn’t know whether it’s safe to move now or not, but then Sam’s turning, looking at him and saying, “Come out, come out, Dean. It’s safe, he’s gone.” The only problem is, Dean’s not sure if it really _is_ safe, because Sam’s stroking his knife, caressing the blade without care. Still, this is Sam, and Dean has never had to worry about his safety from Sam, of all people, before. 

He stands up, joins Sam in the clearing, and looks down to see blood covering the ground where the wolf had been lying. “Who was that?” Dean asks. 

Sam leans close, Dean can’t help tensing, but all Sam does is whisper, “No telling secrets,” before spinning away and letting out a blood-curdling yell that Dean half-thinks is a shout of victory. 

That, on top of everything about this situation, pisses Dean off. He moves to grab one of Sam’s arms, but Sam twirls out of the way, far too quickly and much too gracefully for his large body. “The hell is going on here, Sam?” Dean finally asks, voice loud and heated, pissed off and confused and worried, more than anything. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?” 

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Sam says, grinning, showing Dean his teeth, making the patterns of dried blood on his face shift in the moonlight into lines and patterns that almost look painted on, not by-products of splatter. “Nothing, nothing, nothing. Think I’ll go home now.” 

He starts to leave, and Dean reaches out after him, says without thinking, “Not without me,” and isn’t prepared for Sam to turn around, step closer to him. 

Sam reaches out his empty hand, smears a path of blood down Dean’s forehead and nose, between his eyes. Sam studies him for a moment, head tilted to one side, and then smiles. “Okay, Dean. You drive.” 

\--

Dean follows Sam back to the Impala; he’s turned around and Sam seems to know where he’s going. They don’t see any more dead wolves along the way, and when Dean asks, all Sam will tell him is that they went to the island along with something called Kandjidji. 

“Ka- _what_?” Dean asks, and misses what Sam said because they’ve come out into the parking lot much, much faster than Dean thought was possible. 

“Dean, focus, focus,” Sam chides, shaking a finger at Dean, and Dean’s not sure whether he wants to slice that finger off or pay attention to the scolding, so he rolls his eyes and unlocks the Impala’s trunk, takes out a couple towels. 

He throws them Sam, who catches them both without any trouble, and says, “You need to clean up before I’m letting you sit in my car, dude.” 

Sam laughs, takes off his shirt and rubs one towel over his hair after he shakes his head, sending blood drops flying off like water.

Dean takes the opportunity to study his brother’s torso, narrowing his eyes at what he sees. Sam’s far too skinny, and there are scars scattered over the skin that Dean doesn’t remember, hasn’t ever seen before. One long, white line cuts across from one shoulder to the opposite hip, skin puckered, looking slightly raised, and Dean can’t help asking, “What’s that one from, Sam? Thought you were coming out here to go to school, not get in knife fights.” 

“Wasn’t a knife fight,” Sam says with a grin, winding the towel up and using it to swat excess blood and fur off of his jeans and boots. “Things with fangs like to bite, Dean, and things with claws like to scratch, scratch, scratch. Had an itch, found a way to get rid of it.” 

Dean takes one step towards Sam, who spins from where he’s standing to the passenger’s seat of the Impala, opening the door and laying the clean towel across the seat. 

“Can I sit? Time to go home, Dean, time to go home and,” he stops, cracks his neck, sends one sharp bark of laughter up into the sky, “and clean, sleep, clean, clean, eat. Find a new hunt, go out tomorrow, all done tonight.” 

“Yeah,” Dean murmurs, walking around to the other side of the car, stomach sinking, confused as fuck but unable to put any sort of question into words. “Get in, Sammy.” 

Sam slides inside, movements fluid, graceful, almost as if Sam’s boneless. Dean bites his lip, seeing it, seeing Sam move with a precise dance that he’s never seen another human possess, and then gets behind the wheel. 

“Downtown, where all the lights are bright,” Sam says, leaning his head back, closing his eyes as one foot starts tapping out a manic rhythm on the floor, matched by one of Sam’s hands on his thigh. “Traffic in the city, don’t hang around. Chinatown, smells like fish and cracked plaster.”

Dean starts the car, sits there for a minute, then turns out of the preserve’s parking lot and heads for San Francisco. 

\--

It takes an hour and a half, reminding Dean just how much he hates driving in or around big cities. Give him the open road, no one around for miles, and he’s happy, but this many people around, packed so tightly together, it makes him itchy, makes him long for some backwater town in Nebraska with suspicious locals and one kind of beer on tap at the only roadhouse for sixty miles. 

San Francisco’s bright, loud, almost dizzying to look at, but, then again, the car’s silent save for the non-stop tapping of Sam’s fingers and feet, his brother’s teeth grinding, and some weird, haunting melody Sam hums half-heartedly for a few miles, stops, and then goes back to minutes later. 

Dean opens his mouth to ask where he’s going once the signs on the 101 start coming closer and closer together, but Sam beats him to it, tells him to turn right, left, left, right, go straight, turn around, cut through an alley, until Dean’s ready to ask if Sam’s just leading him around in circles. Still, he makes one more turn and finds himself in the hustle and bustle of Chinatown. 

“Stockton Street,” Sam says, sitting up straight, stopping all of his movement save for the teeth grinding between words. “Less tourists, more fish. Park up there.” 

Bewildered by the sudden change in Sam’s tone and posture, Dean does as directed. As soon as the Impala shuts off, Sam’s up and out of the car, darting off down a narrow side street. Dean yells, and Sam comes back, head poking out from around the corner of a building. 

“Hurry, hurry,” Sam calls out, and Dean grabs a gun, a knife, and follows Sam. 

It’s another maze of twists and turns that leave Dean breathless, trying to keep up with his brother’s longer, almost frenzied strides, and when Sam finally stops in front of a small door, Dean nearly barrels into his back. 

“Fuck, warn a guy, would ya?” Dean mutters. He doesn’t think he spoke loud enough for Sam to hear, but Sam starts laughing, doesn’t even stop when the door opens and a man stares at them both, hands on hips. 

Dean’s first thought is that this guy must be the actor who played Pai Mei in _Kill Bill, Volume Two_ , because he’s got the white hair, the long moustache, the beady eyes, but his face is dipped and shadowed with pock marks, and he’s looking at Sam with some emotion between worry and disappointment. 

“ _Bù zuò shēng_ ,” the man says. Dean raises an eyebrow, has no clue what that means and doesn’t think he would have caught it if the man wasn’t speaking slowly, like Sam’s a child. Sam quiets down, though, calms down and holds his body stiffly, muscles rigid, as he bows. 

The two start to talk in what Dean guesses is some Chinese dialect, the man asking questions and seeming to rein Sam in when Sam’s answers start going on for too long. The man reaches inside at one point during the conversation, pushes a different, clean t-shirt at Sam, helps Sam get his arms inside the sleeves. Eventually Sam says Dean’s name, and Dean tilts his head, elbows his way closer, looks the man over. 

The pockmarks on the man’s face don’t extend down his neck, but there’s a small tattoo on one side of the man’s neck. The man’s arms are covered by his long shirt, but his hands look brown and callused, might suggest the man’s used to working. 

“Dean,” the man says, and raises one eyebrow. 

“Yes,” Dean replies. “Sam’s brother. Who are you?” 

The man smiles, shows his teeth, and says something to Sam, too quick for Dean to pick out the separate syllables, much less pick apart individual words. Whatever he says, it makes Sam laugh, makes Sam step back and start twirling in the middle of the street, hands outstretched. 

“You will call me Jianjun,” the man says, and then shuts the door. 

“O _kay_ ,” Dean mutters, then turns to Sam, rolls his eyes when he sees Sam leaning against the wall across the alleyway and watching him. “Where to now?” Dean asks. 

Sam grins, licks his teeth, and says, “Hungry?”

\--

Dean follows Sam back to Stockton Street, stays on the sidewalk as Sam darts into some kind of herbal store and leans over the counter, kisses the girl behind it on the forehead. Dean’s not close enough to hear what they’re saying, doesn’t know if they’re speaking in English or whatever other language it seems Sam knows, but he sees the girl laugh and hand Sam a couple small brown paper bags. 

Sam leans over the counter again, kisses her once on each cheek, and the girl reaches up, ruffles her hand through Sam’s hair. Dean tenses, but when she sees her hand smeared with blood, she starts to laugh, kisses Sam on one eyelid, then the other, shaking her head with what Dean thinks might be affection. 

Sam skips out of the store, turning and blowing the girl a kiss before he slides one hand down Dean’s upper arm and moving out of reach almost before Dean registers the touch. 

“I thought you said something about food,” Dean calls out, and follows Sam down the street, in and out of people who don’t give Sam a second look, as weird as he’s acting, but who frown when they see Dean, shopkeepers leaning out of their stores to watch as he walks by, men behind stalls keeping pierced eyes on Dean, as if he might go crazy and start shooting them all. 

Sam stops at one of the stalls, bows again, exchanges some words with the man working, and the two carry on an easy conversation, the man taking Sam’s random muscle twitches and sharp, cutting laughter, in complete stride. 

It only takes three minutes, then Sam’s hands, and Dean’s as well, are loaded with steaming cartons, and the man takes out two pairs of chopsticks, in paper sleeves, and offers them to Sam with a bow. Sam says something, it sets the man to chuckling, and leans down, takes them between his teeth with a solemn look. 

“Dude, I,” Dean says, stopping, taken-aback, when the man behind the stall glares at him. 

“C’mon, Dean,” Sam says, speaking around the chopsticks. “Home, home, time to eat.” 

Sam starts moving, and Dean doesn’t spare a glance behind him as he follows Sam into an alleyway, trying hard not to think about how _nuts_ all of this is, how exhausted it’s making him. 

\--

Sam leads Dean to a door set in the alley, in the back of a building that overlooks one of the quieter streets in this district. He kicks the door open and walks in, up a flight of rickety, narrow stairs. Dean raises an eyebrow, closes the door with his foot, sees that there’s no doorknob on the inside, no lock at all. Instead of asking, knowing he won’t get a straight answer right away, he follows Sam up the steps and through another doorway into a plain, sparse, one-room apartment. 

There’s a small mattress in one corner, set right on the floor, covered in a pile of stained and worn blankets. Next to the mattress is a large cardboard box, closed, and a small oil lamp. The rest of the room is pretty plain, except for a small wooden table in the middle of the room, covered and surrounded by books and loose paper, and the stack of more books running the length of an entire wall. The walls, though, they’re what grab Dean’s attention immediately, enough so that he doesn’t notice right away when Sam plucks the take-away boxes from his arms. 

“Thanks,” he murmurs, food forgotten as he walks toward one wall and just stares. There’s a map of San Francisco, pretty detailed, and then a larger one of the Bay Area, right next to an even larger one of the state of California. Pushpins litter all three maps, in different colours that Dean _knows_ have to mean something. Around the maps, drifting across all four walls and even edging onto the two small windows overlooking the street, are notes of the kind that only crazy hunters, their father included, make. Notes in English and those Chinese characters that everyone and their brother has been getting tattoos of lately, sketches and words, copies from books, a few old pages that look as if they’re made out of rice paper or something equally fragile. 

“Too much for one book,” Sam says, and Dean jumps, because he hadn’t heard Sam get close enough to whisper that in Dean’s ear, whisper and leave his breath moist on Dean’s skin. “Had to spread it out, can’t sit still long enough for one book. Food.”

By the time Dean’s turned around, drawn his eyes away from the walls, Sam’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, all the books that had been on top of the table stacked on the floor. Dean hadn’t heard those being moved, there really shouldn’t have been enough time to move all of them and set the cartons on the table, open them, set out two pairs of chopsticks. As Dean’s moving across the room, floorboards creaking underneath him, he’s wondering if he’d been staring at the walls for longer than he’d thought or if he’s going crazy. 

“Food time,” Sam says, grinning up at Dean. “Sit and eat, eat and sit, sit, sit.” 

Dean sinks to his knees, and picks up the pair of chopsticks, grabs a carton of what smells like beef, and digs in. 

\--

The food’s good, almost all gone. Dean doesn’t remember eating it, but Sam’s been holding one carton the entire time, taking small bites here and there, mostly just staring at Dean and chewing on his own lips as much as he’d been chewing on whatever vegetables were in the carton. 

Dean sets the chopsticks down, shifts and stretches out, and says, “So this is where you live, huh, Sam? Can’t say I’ve seen much worse. What about school? Stanford?” 

Sam laughs, sets his carton down and then flops backwards, legs still crossed, puts his hands under his head and lays there, staring up at the ceiling. “Too expensive,” he says. “Didn’t like it. Transferred and didn’t like it. Dropped out, started hunting.” 

The blood running in Dean’s veins turns cold and he leans around the table, looks at Sam. “You’ve been _hunting_?”

“Never come to California, do you? Never hear anything about California, no sea of red and sky of grey, never here, never hear anything.” 

Hearing Sam quote Zeppelin lyrics makes Dean’s head spin, because Sam never _liked_ Zeppelin, bitched about having to listen the band over and over when it was Dean’s turn to pick the music and John wouldn’t put up with any more Metallica. 

Zeppelin lyrics, the run-down apartment, the walls covered in research, the strange gleam in Sam’s eyes and the way his brother wrestled werewolves with nothing more than a knife, the way Sam speaks another language and knows people who laugh when they see Sam covered in blood. 

Put all together, it makes Dean’s head spin, makes his stomach ache under the food he’s just eaten, makes his heart pound. Sam was supposed to be safe and sound down at Stanford, and instead, he’s been hunting, is covered with scars, looks and sounds as if he’s going completely ‘round the bend.

Before Dean can ask any questions, start a conversation, Sam’s kneeling next to him, moving, again, without sound, too fast for any kind of warning. Dean’s startled, holds one hand to his heart, racing out of control, and stays absolutely still as Sam licks a path down Dean’s face. 

Sam’s tongue catches on something other than Dean’s skin, and Dean remembers the blood Sam trailed there, can’t believe Sam let him go out with blood on his face like some kind of lunatic. It distracts him from the wet heat on his face, the glitter behind Sam’s eyes, and the way one of Sam’s hands is pressing finger-shaped bruises into his shoulder.

Dean stays stock-still when Sam pulls back, licks his lips, and grins wide and bright, looking for a moment like he did when he was five, fascinated by his first real winter in New Hampshire. 

“Time to sleep,” Sam says. “More time for hunting later. You sleep,” and manhandles Dean to the mattress. 

Dean tries to protest, but Sam piles blankets on top of him and pushes him into the mattress. For all that it looked old and stained, it curves to fit Dean’s body, cradles him and pulls him in, and Dean’s suddenly tired, confusion and a full belly dragging him towards sleep. 

“Sleep, sleep, rest,” Sam says, and Dean falls asleep to the shrill sound of Sam’s laughter and the smell of Sam, sunk deep into pillows and blankets.


	2. Chapter 2

When he wakes up, the room is empty. Dean’s not worried, because there’s one piece of paper propped against the table, facing him, and the words are big enough to read even while his eyes are still blurry. 

_Will be back. Eat leftovers. New hunt later._

The words are scrawled out in something that looks like red marker, and when Dean manages to wake up his legs and feet enough to shuffle over to the table, he picks up the paper, studies it. The letters are shaky, look as if they were written in a hurry, and definitely with red marker, even though Dean doesn’t see a marker anywhere nearby. 

Left to his own devices, he decides to take Sam’s advice and picks up one of the cartons with food still in it, grabs two chopsticks and digs in to cold noodles. While he’s eating, he walks around the room, studying the walls, going over everything Sam’s pinned up, connecting the notes and pages ripped out of books with the push-pins in the maps and decoding the key: red for things that bleed, white for ghosts, yellow for demons, blue for nature spirits. 

By the time he’s walked around all four walls, is back at the corner where he started, he’s starting to think maybe he should be worried. If Sam’s actually hunted everything on these walls, everything that those pins represent, then Sam’s kill count since he’s been in California, just the past three years, has reached and surpassed Dean’s, counting every hunt Dean’s ever been on since John decided he was old enough. 

It unsettles Dean, a little, because Sam’s never been that type, never showed that much interest in hunting, but when Dean crouches down, moves the oil lamp, and opens the large cardboard box, about the size that might hold a large television, that unsettlement turns to worry with a healthy dash of fear. The box is filled to the brim with knives, knives of all different metals, all different shapes and sizes, all different handles. 

He reaches in, picks up one of the larger ones, and tests the edge, hissing when it cuts him, digs in deeper than he thought he’d pushed. Dean cleans the edge of the knife off with his t-shirt, and swears under his breath when he takes the knife away and sees that it left a rip. 

“My favourite shirt,” he mutters. 

“Shouldn’t go looking, keep the weapons ready, always ready,” Sam says, behind him, and Dean drops the knife back in the box, stands up and spins, nearly knocking into Sam. He stares at Sam, who smiles and says, “Sleep well?” 

Dean frowns, because Sam’s clean and wearing different clothes than yesterday, blue jeans instead of black, a long-sleeved grey cotton shirt that clings to his arms and the muscles in his chest, not the shirt that Jianjun gave Sam. 

“Where’s the shower?” Dean asks, completely unprepared for Sam to dance forward, run his hand through Dean’s hair, and then move out of reach again, toward the steps. 

“Down, down, down,” Sam says, and starts heading down the stairs. 

Dean follows, doesn’t think he has much of a choice, and when they get downstairs, the front door’s closed, locked. Dean blinks, starts to say, “Wasn’t there a,” before Sam’s disappeared down a corridor that Dean hadn’t noticed the night before when his arms were full of Chinese take-away cartons. 

The corridor’s not lit, Dean’s feeling his way along the walls, and then his hand on the right goes through an open doorway. He peers around the corner, squinting, and closes his eyes in sudden pain when Sam turns on a light. 

“Shower, toilet, clothes,” Sam says. 

Dean opens his eyes, feels Sam brush past him, and says, “Sam, wait,” turning to look at his brother. 

“I’ll be upstairs,” Sam says, almost gently, and disappears. Dean listens, leans against the wall, and hears the floorboards upstairs creak as Sam walks back and forth. He turns back, surveys the room, raises an eyebrow when he sees a toilet in one corner, a wardrobe in another, and a tiled area in the third corner, no curtain demarcating the line between shower and the rest of the room. The tile, though, goes up the walls, covers the floor and circles two drains, and there are two showerheads, one to a wall, looking like they’re fixed to point at a certain angle and direction. 

Dean walks over to them, turns them both on, and says, “Huh,” when they immediately start up with hot water. He strips, groans at the feeling of getting out of his clothes after a couple days and one night tracking werewolves in the woods, and the pressure of the hot water on his back and shoulders has him leaning against the wall, eyes closed in drowsy pleasure. 

He’s not sure how long he stands there, but the hot water never runs out. Dean shuts it off, winces when he touches the knobs, burning hot against his fingers, and looks around for a towel. Seeing nothing, but having not checked the wardrobe yet, he walks across the room, dripping water everywhere and getting cracked plaster stuck to the bottom of his feet, he opens the doors and this time raises both eyebrows. Clothes on every shelf, some hanging up, shoes at the bottom, and a shelf of large, fluffy towels. 

Dean dries off and dresses, and when he gets back upstairs, he asks, “What’s up with the clothes, dude? You do your own laundry?” 

“Don’t need to, never need to, no need,” Sam sing-speaks back to him, and then gestures at one area of the wall. “New hunt. Kelpies,” he says, solemn. “Jianjun can’t hear them yet, but they’re getting louder, too loud, have to teach them to shush, shush, quiet.” 

“Kelpies?” Dean asks, curiosity piqued, going over to where Sam’s pointing. He studies the sketches, the sentences written with what looks a brush, the curious Chinese characters lingering around the edges of something that looks vaguely like a horse. “Where are they?” 

Sam shrugs, spreads out his arms and twirls his way across the room to the wall of maps. He takes a blue pushpin out of the wall, one that isn’t being used, and sticks his tongue out, catches it between his teeth, focusing on the map of California. 

Dean watches as Sam tilts his head, moves to the map of the Bay Area but then back again to the larger map of California, and Sam sticks the pin into a small spot of blue on the other side of the Bay. Dean gets close enough to read, “Briones Reservoir. Sam, they’re too loud? They’re, like, twenty miles away, on the other side of _Oakland_. How the fuck can you hear them?” 

Sam puts his hand over Dean’s mouth, bends down to look Dean in the eyes, and whispers, “Listen.” Dean moves his head back, but Sam’s hand follows, and the other cradles Dean’s skull so he can’t move. “Close your eyes and _listen_ ,” Sam says. 

He’s crazy, they both are, because there’s no way Sam can hear kelpies, of all things, and yet Dean closes his eyes. He breathes in the smell of Sam, close to him, smelling clean and somehow not, like blood has seeped too deep into his skin to ever come out, hears the people outside, the strange, slow creaking of the building around them, but doesn’t hear kelpies. 

“Listen,” Sam says again, but Dean wrestles his way out of Sam’s hold and stands there, staring at his brother. 

“Sam, you’ve lost it, okay? There probably aren’t even any kelpies out there.” 

Sam glares, mutinous, then laughs, holding his stomach. “Ask Jianjun, seek, knock, ask, going hunting with or without you.” 

Dean reaches out, but Sam moves with unnatural grace and speed, and looks straight at Dean, pulls himself together enough to say, “I’m going for the kelpies. Come as you’d like,” before he disappears down the stairs. Dean follows, but isn’t in time to stop Sam from leaving, sees the door close behind Sam. When he looks out into the alleyway, Sam’s gone. 

\--

Dean goes back upstairs, studies the apartment, if this dive can even be called that, and shakes his head. “You’ve lost it, little brother,” Dean mutters to himself, but stops, remembering the clothes downstairs in the bathroom, the way Sam seemed to get along so well with the girl at the store, the guy behind the food stall, even the crazy old Pai Mei look-alike. Things aren’t adding up whatever way he looks at the equation, but he knows he has to be missing something, so he goes out and tries to track down Jianjun. 

The street outside is loud and vibrant, filled with the smell of fish. A string of red lanterns is stretched from one row of buildings, across the street, to another, pinned to window ledges. Most of the people look Asian, only a few white faces, and Dean doesn’t understand the languages people are talking in, but they smile at him and he smiles back. He wanders around for an hour or so before he stumbles, almost by accident, across the same shop that Sam went into the night before. 

It’s open, the same girl from the night before behind the counter, wrapping up some form of root for an elderly woman. The woman’s chattering away and Dean walks around the shop, looking at the cans and jars on the shelves, the open bins of fruits and vegetables that Dean’s never seen before, the decorations and notices on the wall, everything written in those picture-symbols. 

He’s studying one when someone behind him says, “Traditional Chinese medicine shop.” Dean turns, studies the girl from the night before, her simple t-shirt and cotton trousers, long and glossy black hair. “Can I help you find something?” 

Dean smiles, says, “My brother. He’s about this tall,” gesturing with one hand, “has a dopey grin, came in last night and picked up a couple packages from you.” 

She returns his smile, shakes her head. “I do not know your brother. No one like you have described came in here last night.” 

“Listen,” Dean begins to say, but someone comes up behind the girl, the man from the food stall, and cuts them both off, starts speaking to the girl. They carry on a conversation for a few minutes, both of them gesturing at Dean from time to time, until Dean’s frustrated enough to interrupt. “Excuse me? Still here. You gonna tell me where my brother is and how you know him, or do I have to try asking someone else?”

The girl looks Dean over, finally bows slightly and says, “I am Mei Xing. Your brother came in last night for _yaba_. Li will take you to Jianjun.” 

“Li?” Dean asks, and says, “Right. Li,” when the man behind Mei Xing gives him a tight smile. 

“Li does not speak English,” the girl says, and ushers them out of the store. “Happy hunting.” 

\--

Li might not speak English, but that doesn’t stop Dean from getting the distinct impression that the man’s got it out for him. By the time they get to Jianjun’s door, Dean’s been nearly run over three times, led around the entire district of Chinatown—twice, and been glared at more times than he can count. When Li knocks on Jianjun’s door, he gives Dean a mocking little grin and hightails it out of there, leaving Dean alone as the door opens. 

Jianjun grins widely at Dean, says, “Come in, Dean. Sam said you would be here, but he did not think it would be so soon. You are a good hunter.” 

Dean follows Jianjun inside, sees that the home is clean and well-kept, a stark contrast to Sam’s. There are maps on the hallway walls, most of them of certain districts of San Francisco, Dean thinks, and then larger ones of the Bay Area, but Jianjun doesn’t give Dean time to look them over, see if there are any notes or tags on them.

They end up in a living room, sitting on low, cushioned chairs, and Jianjun pours Dean a cup of green-tinged water. 

“Tea,” the old man says in explanation. “Good for mind and talking. You have questions, yes?”

“Yes,” Dean says, shifting uneasily in his chair at the look Jianjun’s giving him. Jianjin smiles over his cup, and gestures for Dean to go on. “Has he gone insane?” 

That makes Jianjin laugh, set down his tea cup and roar in amusement for a few minutes. Dean waits for the laughter to die down, rolling his eyes after a moment when it doesn’t and trying a sip of the tea. He winces, which seems to help Jianjin settle down. 

“Your brother is not insane,” the old man says. “He is a hunter. In my village in China, there was a story about a man who saves the daughter of the Dragon King. He is given one reward, the ability to speak to animals, and in a time of great peril, he gives up his gift to save his family. Your brother is like that hunter.” 

“Sam can speak to animals?” Dean asks, eyebrow raised. 

Jianjun shakes his head, sips his tea, and says, “No, he cannot speak to animals. Your brother, he has a gift. He hears the supernatural. Hears things, and can see them, can speak to them. He can even fight them. He is strong like wolves and fast like vampires.” 

Dean wants to interrupt, wants to say there’s no such thing as vampires, but Jianjun is still talking, and Dean can’t decide if this man is as crazy as Sam is, or if his brother’s really this _different_ , a person wholly and completely changed from the Sam that left him three years ago. 

“He has their reflexes, their senses, and the noise of hearing them drives him to hunt,” Jianjun is saying when Dean manages to tune in again. “He came to me two years ago, two and a half, perhaps, and asked me to help him. I trained him and his abilities, and sent him out with my blessing. I worry about him like a son, but he does not belong to me.” 

Jianjun’s eyes on Dean pierce, like arrows or bullets, and Dean looks away from those hawkish eyes, looks down at his tea and wonders when he drank the rest of it, emptied the cup. 

“What else?” Dean asks. 

The old man looks at Dean, pours another cup of tea from a kettle sitting on the table next to his chair, and says, carefully, “There is the _yaba_.” Dean frowns, shakes his head, doesn’t understand, and Jianjun sighs. “ _Yaba_. You would call it a drug. It keeps him awake, keeps him focused on one supernatural creature at a time. Without the _yaba_ , he hears everything, cannot function. It narrows his mind and concentration. It has side effects, though.”

“A drug,” Dean says. “What kind of drug?” 

The answer, when it comes, haltingly out a mouth not entirely used to English, should surprise Dean. It doesn’t, though, not when Dean remembers the strange, twirling dance of Sam’s restless movements, the high barks of laughter, the lick from the night before, down his forehead, that makes Dean’s palms slick with sweat. 

“Methamphetamines,” Dean repeats, voice hollow, mind numb. Drugs to _help_ Sam, and yet Sam still has the ability to take on a pack of two dozen wolves with one knife and end up completely unharmed. A flush of anger runs through Dean, that Jianjun and his crew, some of the people in this district, have made the choice for Sam, to push these drugs at his brother, the kind of drugs that no sane person would touch, especially not more than once. 

“You were not here,” Jianjun says quietly, as if he knows what Dean’s thinking. “When your brother came here, he was going mad. You think he is crazy now, you would not have recognised him them. He is better, much better, and the people here, we are his family. We take care of him, feed him, clothe him. This is one part of the city, but we are like a village here, and he is our hunter, our link to the Dragon King. When he speaks, we listen.” Jianjun pauses, takes a sip of tea, and asks, carefully, “Would you have done the same, you and your father?”

The worst thing about that question is the answer. 

Dean doesn’t know. 

“You never gave us that choice,” he says, but even he knows that his voice, his protest, sounds thin, weak. “He never called us, never told us.” 

“He was not the only one with a telephone, Dean,” Jianjun says. “Tell me, because Sam never has: why did he leave? Why has he never reached out to his birth family?”

Dean shudders, lets Jianjun refill his teacup, then sips, grimacing again at the taste, blinking at the lurid flowers painted on the sides of such delicate china. “Sam and Dad had an argument about a hunt,” he says, haltingly. He’s never talked about what happened that night, not to anyone, has tried to push it out of his mind all together. 

“Sam was researching, he found some things different than what Dad had, but Dad didn’t want to listen. He went out, got hurt, and when he came back, Sam went off, started yelling about how Dad was too stubborn to listen, too arrogant. Dad said that he didn’t have to take that from a child, someone who didn’t know anything, and that’s when Sam brought up Stanford. He said, ‘How can I not know anything? They want me there, offered me a full ride,’ and Dad told him that if he’d rather have that than us, he could go take it.” 

Jianjun nods, says, “So Sam left at that moment?” 

Dean shakes his head. “He waited until Dad was better,” he says, caught in the memory. “He was so _worried_ , and there was blood everywhere. Sam yells when he’s afraid. He did then, anyway. He was afraid, and Dad was practically unconscious, and they still had time to rip into each other while Sam was patching him up. But when Sam took the stitches out, when he knew Dad was better, he told me he was sorry, and then he left.” 

“Did he yell?” Jianjun asks, voice full of sympathy. 

“For hours,” Dean says with a short snap of laughter, nothing funny about the conversation. “Swore up one side and down the other about, oh, tonnes of things.” 

Jianjun nods, and says, eyes older than they have a right to be, “Because he was worried.” 

Dean stops, mid-breath, because he’s never thought of it like that, not when it comes to him and Sam. Sam and John, yeah, sure, but never between the brothers. Except, except maybe the old guy’s right, and Sam was worried even more for Dean, knowing that he was leaving Dean with John and the hunt, taking off to do his own thing. 

“He asked me to come with him,” Dean admits, and downs the rest of the tea. Before Jianjun can ask, he adds, “That’s when I told him to get out.” 

“You feel guilty,” Jianjun says. “But this is not your fault. Perhaps it is all the will of the gods, the hand of the Dragon King moving among us. If Sam had stayed or if you had come to California with him, then his gifts might have driven him insane by now.” 

It’s cold comfort to hear, Dean doesn’t _want_ to hear it, but before he can say anything, reply to Jianjun, the old man says, “But this is all in the past now. What is done is done, and we must move on from here. Do not wallow in guilt for it will eat you alive, Dean. Sam is alive and functioning, he has friends and a surrogate family here, and when you leave, we will take care of him.” 

That stops Dean up short, and he asks, “When I leave?” 

The old man smiles, pours Dean another cup of tea, and murmurs, “You are a hunter without a village. You cannot stay in one place for very long, even if it would be for your brother. You are here for a reason and you will go, and we will take care of him.”

\--

Dean drives out of San Francisco a few hours later, after Jianjun’s given him a pencil-sketched map to get back to Sam’s place. He’s picked up a disposable camera at one of the stores along Stockton Street, takes the entire roll in Sam’s place, most of it used up on the walls, close-up shots of the maps with their pushpins, a couple on the box of knives, trying to keep the bed, the centre of the room and the brown paper bags of what he can only assume are the _yaba_ pills that Mei Xing gives to Sam out of every shot.

He takes the Bay Bridge across to Oakland, drives through and follows a map toward Briones Reservoir, and when he gets there, parks, gets out of the car, he thinks, just for a moment, that he can hear horses. 

“Well, _shit_ ,” Dean mutters to himself, wondering if he’s going crazy now as well, but as he walks around the lake, silver-loaded shotgun in hand, he sees a disturbance on the water, pauses. Sam comes up out of the water, sitting astride a horse that’s gleaming the colour of shallow rivers, mane reflecting the sun so brilliantly Dean has to shield his eyes. 

Sam’s laughing, yelling something that Dean can’t make out, and then the horse rears on top of the water, vanishes beneath the surface again. Another horse, a few yards away, breaks out from under the water, this one tinted blue from darker waters, Dean thinks, and cants its head, neighs, and starts trotting across the water, tail flicking out behind it as it sets its gaze on Dean. 

Dean raises the shotgun, shoots, and swears when the horse leaps over the bullet and puts its head down, starts galloping toward Dean on the surface of the reservoir. 

It’s almost to the shore when a hand comes up out of the water and grabs one of the rear hooves. The kelpie screams in annoyance, turns and starts biting at the water, and Dean can only watch as Sam vaults up out of the water in a reverse dive and lands on the kelpie’s back. As the horse rears, Sam grabs the mane and holds on.

“Silver-shot won’t work, Dean!” Sam yells, before the kelpie turns and starts galloping across the water, bucking every so often to see if it can dislodge Sam. Sam holds on, though, doesn’t look like he’s having any trouble, as if his body has moulded to the kelpie’s, like he belongs where he’s sitting. “Bless the water!”

The kelpie drags Sam under the surface, and it takes Dean a moment of staring before he can shake himself out of it, drop to one knee on the bank of the reservoir and pull a rosary out from his jacket pocket. He holds the rosary above the water, starts murmuring the prayer. He finishes, makes the sign of the cross, and its like lightning strikes are hammering the water, burst after burst of light that hurts Dean’s eyes, smells like ozone. He hears indistinct screaming, animal and supernatural both, but then Sam’s head pops up from the middle of the reservoir. 

Dean stands up, shoves the rosary back in his pocket, and watches Sam swim to the bank, all long strokes and power, more strength than Dean would have thought possible for a human. He remembers what Jianjun said, that Sam has the speed, the reflexes, the strength, of something supernatural, and Dean can only smile when Sam lies panting on the bank, grinning widely as if he’s just heard the funniest joke ever. 

“Riding kelpies,” is all Dean can think to say, as he shakes his head. “Sam, you are one crazy fucker, you know that? You could’ve just blessed the damn water and stayed dry.”

“No fun in that, no fun, have to have _fun_ ,” Sam says, looking up at him.

Dean can’t help returning Sam’s smile. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” 

Sam sits up, and Dean notices that his brother’s got a handful of kelpie hair, probably from the tail, judging by how long the hairs are, curling different tints of blue-tinged white. With a distracted smile, Sam tilts his head, then nods to himself, and starts tying the individual hairs together, braiding some, knotting others, until they’ve been turned into one complicated-looking twined piece. 

Sam stands up, and says, “Wrist, Dean.” 

Dean stretches out one hand, and then asks, “Why?” 

Sam looks at Dean through bangs plastered to his forehead, hanging over his eyes, and sticks his tongue between his teeth as he ties the twined braid around Dean’s wrist a few times, knotting it at the end. It’s a perfect fit, nothing extra. 

Dean doesn’t feel anything different, doesn’t know why Sam’s giving him an intent look, as if something should have happened, but then Sam smiles and nods.

“Protection,” Sam says, and looks at Dean, stands up and kisses Dean once on each cheek before pressing his lips against Dean’s. “Kelpie hair, strong protection, going to fight demons, helps to have a _rhusag_.”

“A what?” Dean asks, before he asks, “Sam, how many languages do you speak now?” 

Sam smiles, dances away, spinning on the bank of the reservoir, and between laughs that spiral up to the sky, across the calm placid surface of the water, he says, “Have to know what they’re all saying, don’t I?” 

\--

Dean sits down and looks out over the water. Sam can’t sit still, doesn’t, ends up walking back and forth in front of the water while his clothes dry in the sunlight, still on him, squelching with every step. At least he took off his shoes before he dived in, and they’re sitting on the ground next to Dean, plain and worn-in sneakers, grungy laces that were probably once white, now a muted kind of brown, dotted with mud and blood. 

“Sam,” Dean begins, when the sun’s moved in the sky and his ass is getting sore. “Sam, there’s something,” he says. 

Sam moves, stands in front of Dean, blocking the sun, and cuts Dean off. “The demons are talking, talking, talking,” he says, head tilting to one side, chewing thoughtfully on the inside of his cheek. “Big ones, worried, worried.” He stops, then says, quietly, sounding more sane than he has at any other time over the past twenty-four hours, “Dad’s got them worried.” 

“He wants you there,” Dean says, and the look Sam gives Dean isn’t one Dean has words for. It makes breath stick in his throat, makes his stomach turn over. “Sam, he sent me here to bring you, so you can be there.” 

Sam shakes his head, moves and stands at the edge of the water. “Can’t go, won’t go,” Sam says, soft. “Can’t go.” 

“Sam,” Dean says, but stops when Sam tilts his head back to the sky and screams, this time in something approaching anguish. 

“Can’t go,” Sam says, turning back to Dean, unashamed or unaware of the tears running down his cheeks. “Demons too loud, Dad too angry, Sam too, too different. Can’t go.”

Dean stands up, steps toward his brother, but Sam shakes his head, skitters out of the way, out of reach. 

“Can’t go, Dean, can’t, can’t, _can’t_.” Sam straightens, smiles slightly, shrugs, and adds, eyes and voice going distant, “New hunt, new blood, new threat. _Drekavac_ , crying in the darkness, cries all night long, someone stepping on its tail.” 

“Sam,” Dean says. “Please, Sam, come with me.” 

Sam shakes his head again, steps forward lightly, as if worried that Dean might do something. Dean doesn’t move, so Sam comes closer, then leans down, presses his lips against Dean’s again, presses his thumbprint between Dean’s eyebrows. 

“Protection,” he whispers. “Don’t listen to the demon.” 

Dean closes his eyes, breathes out through his nostrils, and when he opens his eyes, Sam’s gone, shoes and all. Dean turns around, looks for his brother, and doesn’t see him anywhere, doesn’t even see a trail of water from Sam’s wet clothes. 

\--

Dean takes the highway out of the Bay Area; as much as he prefers back roads to these six and eight and ten and twelve lane monstrosities, he’d rather get out of the city as fast as possible and traffic’s moving, at least. He gets out past Oakdale before he can breathe comfortably, out of the city before his muscles are finally relaxing, and he stops an hour after that for some food, going above Yosemite towards Nevada on Highway 108. 

He stops at a family place with over-inflated prices to compensate for the tourist crowd, but the burger’s good and the fries are crunchy on the outside, soft and potato-y on the inside, and while he might have preferred a beer, the coke’s cold, wet. The waitress flirts with him, and Dean flirts back, and he’s feeling at home in his skin for the first time since he drove into California. 

The Nevada border comes quick, and Dean’s nearly to Walker Lake before his phone rings, startling him. He checks the caller ID, winces, and turns down the music before he says, “Hey, Dad.” 

“Let me talk to your brother,” John says, no preamble. 

“Dad,” Dean says, but John cuts him, demands again to talk to Sam. “Dad, Sam’s not here.” 

There’s silence on the other end of the conversation, but then John says, voice low and blank, “Sam’s not there. You having trouble finding him, Dean?” 

“No, sir. Found him just fine.” Dean takes a deep breath, and says, “He’s not coming.”

More silence, until John parrots back what Dean has just said. “Not coming.” 

“No, sir. There’s another hunt he’s working on, something called a _drekavac_. I didn’t have time to look it up before I left.”

John doesn’t say anything for a long, silent minute, and when Dean’s phone beeps that it’s getting out of cellular range, John says, “I’ll text co-ordinates. You’ve got three days,” and hangs up. 

Dean breathes, lets the phone drop onto the passenger side seat, and when the phone rings with a new text message, he ignores it, drives onto the Walker River reservation. 

\--

Dean and John had come back here a few months after Sam left. There’d been talk of a skinwalker, maybe an older creature of legend, caught in the desert, and they’d come to the reservation, ignoring how close California was. No one had talked to them, at first, but when they’d killed the shifter, one of the people living on the reservation had seen them, had watched as they salted and burned the body. 

They hadn’t exactly been welcomed after that, but the reception had warmed a little, and when they’d gone back a few times, always intending to take those extra couple of hours and check on Sam, they’d gotten distracted, the welcoming better, keeping them on reservation-land until something else came up, something in a different direction from Palo Alto. 

The leader, the chief, of the reservation had pulled John aside once, told him not to worry about Sam, and thinking about it now, as he parks in front of the small restaurant on the main road, Dean wonders what Lew Appah knew then, what he might know now.

Dean walks into the restaurant, and while some of the conversations stop, patrons unwilling to speak freely in front of a white man who obviously doesn’t belong, the man behind the counter vaults over it and strides over to Dean, clasps his hand and his shoulder. 

“Dean, surprised to see you,” the man says, one around Dean’s age, maybe a little younger, with a wide open smile and friendly eyes. “We weren’t expecting you or your father for another couple of months. Everything all right?” 

Dean smiles, says, “Yeah, just fine. Coming back from a visit to Sam, thought I’d stop here for the night before I keep going. How’ve you been, Drew?”

“Oh, can’t complain,” Drew says with a laugh, raising an eyebrow at the mention of Dean’s visit to Sam but not saying anything about it. “You know me, Dean. You hungry? Mom’s got a good pot of stew going in the back.” 

Dean’s stomach growls, and after he agrees to a meal, he says, “Random question. I have a camera, need some pictures developed. Is there anywhere around here I can get that done?” 

Drew grins, says, “Leave it to me. You’ll have them back before you take off.”


	3. Chapter 3

That night, Dean sits in a ring of people outside, under the stars. There’s a storyteller visiting from another Paiute reservation, supposed to be good, and he’s among friends, holding a cold one. Drew’s sitting next to him, and they’re talking quietly about nothing when there’s a stir at one end of the group. Dean studies the storyteller as she comes into a view, taking in the casual sit of her jeans on her hips, the bare feet peeking out underneath them, the long-sleeved cotton, and when he gets to her face, he tilts his head, because she reminds him, for some reason, of his brother. 

Her eyes are dark, deep, nothing like Sam’s slanted cat’s-eyes, but they hold the same feral awareness at some level that Sam’s do now, just like the tilt of her head matches his, as if there’s something far away that she’s listening to. Her hair’s long, hanging in some kind of twisted pattern down her back, not quite a braid, and her hands, they’re tapping out patterns on her thighs as she walks next to Chief Appah toward the centre of the ceremonial ground. 

The two stop in front of Dean and Drew, and Dean stands up, nods at both of them. 

“It’s good to see you, Dean,” Lew says quietly. “We weren’t expecting you this soon.” 

Dean smiles, says, “Yeah, Drew said the same thing. Came out to get Sam, but ended up leaving him in the city.” At Lew’s raised eyebrow, Dean searches for words, some way to explain that he couldn’t bring Sam with him no matter how much he wanted to, that he was respecting Sam’s wishes, that Sam warned him and gave him protection, and that was enough, would always be enough, but Lew must see it in Dean’s eyes, because he nods once, gently. 

“This is Sara,” he says, resting one hand lightly on the woman’s shoulder. 

“Ma’am,” Dean says, not only because she looks older than him, maybe in her middle, late thirties, but because good storytellers, the kind the rest of the people here say she is, deserve respect. 

Lew introduces Dean to her, and her lips press together as she searches his face, as she studies him. There’s a tense, quiet moment, but then she relaxes, nods at Dean, and says, “It’s good to meet you, Dean. What do you know about the bracelet on your wrist?” 

Dean frowns, narrows his eyes, and says, “It’s a _rhusag_ , some kind of charm made from kelpie hair. Why?” 

Sara smiles, shakes her head, and tells Lew she’s ready to begin. Dean sits down again as Lew moves away, toward the back of the crowd, and leaves Sara in front of them all. She perches on a rock, scans the crowd, and says, “There is a story passed down among our people,” starting the evening with a traditional opening and as she speaks, she weaves words of origins and beginnings. 

\--

Dean’s entranced by her words, by her voice, the way that things she describes come to life in front of him. But then she finishes her third story and looks at him, right at Dean, and says, “There is a story passed down among our people of a great and mighty hunter,” and his blood runs cold. Her eyes, the animal awareness inside of them, has focused on Dean, and he knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that she is speaking right to him as the fourth story begins. 

“When people are in danger, they know that the hunter will protect them. He searches out evil and destroys it, so that the people may live to see another summer. He is careful when he hunts and he follows the sacred traditions of many peoples, but he does not hesitate to destroy what needs to be destroyed.” 

Sara goes on, tells a story of the gods bringing a woman and child to this hunter, though her eyes never waver from Dean’s, and he thinks she’s speaking metaphorically. The people the hunter lives with don’t understand the woman and child, can’t, because they are different, a gift from the gods, and so they become intent on killing the strange people who have come to live among them. The woman and child run away and the hunter follows them for three days and three nights, until finally the woman and child return to the land of the gods. 

The hunter mourns for a day and a night and then follows them, stands up to the gods, and proves his love, his devotion, by his willingness to die for his family and then by his knowledge of them, when he picks them out of a crowd, blindfolded with reeds in his ears. 

“The gods are so impressed with the hunter that they make him different, half-god, half-man, still mortal but with gifts. The gods sing songs of welcoming, and the hunter’s wife and son build him a tipi and welcome him with food to the land they came from.”

Sara pauses, blinks in the starlight, and her voice dives into softness, spirals down into solemnity. 

“The hunter is happy there because his wife and child are there, but it is not his home. He yearns for his home at all times, even in winter, when long nights are spent inside with his wife, even in summer, when his son is full-grown and marries, even in spring and autumn, when there are hunts enough to keep him busy. He yearns, and the gods see this, his unhappiness, and when winter comes again, they place him in the sky, where he can keep watch over his wife and his homeland both. They give him a quiver of arrows and a bow made of buffalo-gut, so that he can hunt, always, as he keeps watch.”

\--

Silence, all around, and Sara rubs her hands on her thighs. 

“This is a story of our people, passed down among the generations, one story among many, too many for the telling,” she says, and people sit there, taking time to break out of the spell she’s woven around them. 

Dean can hear them leaving, but he can’t move, trying to figure out what message is behind the story, what reason she had for keeping her eyes on him the whole time she was telling that last tale. He doesn’t move, and neither does she, until even Drew is pushing himself up and gripping Dean’s shoulder in a silent ‘ _good night_.’ 

Lew moves to help Dean up, and Dean takes the chief’s hand, fingers sliding against the worn, leathery skin, the calluses of a man who’s not afraid to work. 

“What does it mean?” Dean finally asks Sara, when she’s standing as well. “What do you know? What have you both known?” 

“Sam’s a hunter, Dean,” Lew says. “He always has been, more so than you or your father. He hated it, tried to deny what he’s always been, but it didn’t work. Couldn’t work, not with his gifts.”

Sara tilts her head, says, “He’s always been unhappy, I think. Always was, until he gave into it, until there were people who could see what he was and who could set him on the right path. Gave up the family he was born into, couldn’t be happy among the family he chose, and now?” She stops, shakes her head. “Now, who’s to say?”

Dean stands motionless as Sara leans forward, kisses him on the forehead, and leaves, disappearing into the darkness, melding with it. 

“Sara is touched by the gods, much like your brother,” Lew says after a quiet minute. “Not a demon, like Sam, but one of our gods. She’s been searching for a place to fit, like Sam, but she hasn’t found one yet. Someday soon, we hope.” Lew breathes, looks up at the stairs, and points. 

Dean follows his gaze, and Lew says, “The great hunter,” as Dean traces out a set of stars that look, vaguely, like a man holding a bow. His chest aches, thinking of Sam, thinking of his father, feeling caught between the two. 

“Come on,” Lew says, startling Dean. “You need to sleep, you look like you’re about ready to fall flat on your face out here, and let me tell you, speaking from experience? The ground here isn’t the most comfortable. A full night’s sleep will do you some good, and you’ll eat breakfast before you leave in the morning.” 

Dean can’t find it in himself to argue, so he lets Lew drag him back to Lew’s house and falls asleep in a bed, thinking of Sam’s wide, bright smile, and the way blood clung to his hair. 

\--

Dean covers the country between the reservation and Eldon, Missouri, in two days, pulling up in front of the town’s only motel just before sunset. He sits in the car for a few minutes, takes the chance to catch his breath and get ready for the confrontation he can feel coming. John’s truck is in front of the last room, an old, beat-up Ford Crown Vic parked right next to it that Dean doesn’t recognise. 

He knocks on the door, and when it opens, he raises an eyebrow at the unfamiliar face staring at him. 

“’M Dean,” he says, and the man, grizzled and old, around John’s age, grins, showing Dean his teeth, one of them on the top missing, the scar down one side of his face crinkled up in something like amusement. 

“Name’s Joshua. Come on in, son,” Joshua, apparently, says, and opens the door wider. 

Joshua steps out once Dean’s inside, closes the door behind him as he goes, and Dean hears the Ford start up, engine turning over with a little difficulty before it gets in gear and leaves. John’s standing with his back to Dean, facing the wall and the papers covering it, and Dean can’t help the smile at seeing it, so much like Sam’s, the way Sam studied the maps on his walls. 

“Dad,” Dean says quietly, stepping forward, around the corner of one of the beds in the room, dropping a bag on the round table, next to the small coffeepot, the developed pictures tucked inside. 

“Why isn’t your brother here, Dean,” John asks, tone more demand than question. “I sent you to get him. We’re just lucky Joshua was in the area and had the time to come down and help us out.” 

Dean exhales, rocks a bit on his feet before answering. “Sam can’t leave the area. He’s got other hunts to worry about that,” he says, before John turns around, cuts him off. 

“Other hunts?” John says, voice low, eyes angry. “Other hunts are more important than this one? Dean, he wasn’t supposed to be hunting at _all_. You wanna tell me what’s going on with him?” 

Dean looks away, can’t meet his father’s eyes, but he asks, “The first time we went to Walker River. What did Lew tell you? I know he said we didn’t need to worry about Sam, but there was something else, wasn’t there?” 

John scoffs, says, “Don’t change the subject, Dean. What’d you find? How’s your brother doing?”

“He’s good,” Dean says after a moment, unwilling to try and decide whether he thinks that’s a lie or not. “Has a place in Chinatown, some people there’re looking out for him.” 

John doesn’t say anything to that, looks as if he’s taking it in, letting it settle, and then he turns back to the pieces of paper pinned on the wall, nodding in their direction. “Demon’s going after another baby tonight. We’ve already got the father out of the house, so it’ll just be the mom and the kid. Joshua’s got a gun, special kind we’ve already tested out, and we think it’ll be good enough for the demon. Still, there’s a ritual, too, and a spot for some holy water as insurance. You got a preference?” 

“How’s Joshua with rituals?” Dean asks, and he’s slightly surprised to see his father’s lips quirk up in the beginnings of a smile. 

“He writes them, Dean,” John says. 

Dean rolls his eyes, says, “Then I’ll take the water. Can’t go wrong with that,” and John nods, everything settled. Dean eyes his bag, thinks about the photos, and decides not to show them to his father, not yet.

\--

They’re in place at the house with plenty of time to spare. The woman’s none the wiser, which worries Dean; people should be more careful, women especially, home by themselves, but when the demon arrives and she’s sliding up one of the walls, Joshua barrels out of the hallway closet and starts reading the ritual, trapping the demon. The woman falls down the wall, runs for her baby, and as John’s lining up the shot, Dean takes the two civilians outside, tells them to get in their car and drive, tells them not to come back until morning. 

He runs back up the steps, hears the demon talking, saying something about how it has plans for Sam, how Sam’s evil, gonna need to be put down like a rabid dog, and Dean wonders if the demon’s telling the truth for once, until he remembers Sam’s words, low and earnest, ‘ _Don’t listen to it_.’ Dean growls, throws the bottle of holy water on the demon, and as it shrieks in pain, he tells John to shoot it. 

The demon laughs, does something that sends Joshua skidding out of the kid’s nursery into the hallway, down the stairs, and throws John against the wall, claw marks down his cheeks, across his forehead, dripping blood everywhere. Nothing happens to Dean, though, and the demon steps forward, eyes narrowed as it gets trapped where it’s standing, stopped by the ritual Joshua read. 

“Why not you?” it murmurs, looking Dean over, and its eyes widen when it catches sight of the kelpie-hair bracelet peeking out from under Dean’s sleeve. The demon growls, but before it can do or say anything else, John’s tossed Dean the gun, Dean aims and shoots, and they both watch as the demon shakes, shudders, and then implodes in a rush of heat and ozone. 

“Y’all alive up there?” Joshua calls out, voice carrying up the steps. 

John looks at Dean, who nods, and then calls back, “We’re fine.” He pushes himself off the wall, wipes at his face absently, the wounds already clotting, needing stitches but nothing too severe, and walks over to Dean. “How,” he says. 

Dean holds out his hand, turns up the edge of his jacket so John can see the bracelet, and John’s jaw clenches as he studies it, makes no move to touch it. 

“Sam give you that?” he asks. 

“Killed the kelpies it came from and wove it right in front of me,” Dean replies, standing his ground. 

John stares at the bracelet, gives the Dean the faintest of nods, hint of something stirring in the back of his eyes, and walks past Dean, leaves the nursery. 

Dean stands there a moment longer, wondering what would have happened to him without the bracelet, without Sam’s protection, and shakes his head, turns and walks away from the smell of fire and lightning. 

\--

They regroup back at the motel, get out of the house before the woman comes back with cops or her husband, and John goes into the bathroom, starts sewing his face up. Joshua’s making some coffee in the small pot, and Dean’s standing at the window, looking out over the parking lot, across that and the street into the woods. It’s quiet, and for the barest hint of a second, he thinks he hears something, but then Joshua’s talking to him, asking him about the bracelet, so Dean shakes it off, turns around and takes a cup of motel coffee with a quiet word of thanks. 

“Sam made it,” he says in explanation, wincing at the taste of the coffee. “He went after a herd of kelpies in one of the reservoirs across the Bay, ended up taking hair from them and weaving the bracelet while I was watching. Put it on my wrist right then.” 

Joshua asks if he can see it, so Dean holds out his hand again, and lets the older man study the braided strands of hair, the way they’re tied together, knotted this way and that. 

“What did he call it?” Joshua asks, and Dean sees his father watching him over Joshua’s shoulder.

“A _rhusag_ ,” Dean says. “He said it would be strong protection against demons.”

Joshua hums thoughtfully, then says, “Well, looks like he was right. Good thing you had that, Dean, or we would’ve been shit outta luck, y’know? What’d you say Sam was going after next?”

Dean pulls the odd word from his memory, says, “A _drekavac_. He mentioned something about it crying, someone stepping on its tail, I don’t remember what else.” He laughs, adds, “I don’t even know what a _drekavac_ is.”

“A creature that’s born from the soul of an unbaptised child,” Joshua says. “Eastern European, if I recall.” Joshua pauses, then says, “I don’t know if I’ve read of anyone hearing one, though. Other demons can, some spirits lost on this plane, even animals, but not humans. Strange.” 

Dean looks over Joshua’s shoulder, sees his father gripping the edge of the counter, staring in the mirror and not blinking. The demon’s words come back to haunt him, rabid dog, evil, needs to be destroyed, and he speaks before he can stop himself. 

“The demon’s wrong,” he says, and when John doesn’t move, when Joshua looks at him with something approaching pity, he says it again, more firmly. “The demon was _wrong_ , Dad. There’s nothing wrong with Sam. He’s a damn good hunter, that’s all. Demons lie, we all know that.” 

Neither of the other two say anything, neither of them move, so Dean huffs, grabs his stuff and walks out of the hotel room, slamming the door behind him. He gets into the Impala, sits in the driver’s seat and tries to calm himself, tries to remind himself that Sam knew the demon was going to lie, reminded Dean of that before Dean could doubt his own brother, and when the worry’s turned into a grateful sort of rage, he turns the car on, puts the pedal to the floor, and starts making the drive back to California. 

\--

Dean sticks to the back roads, speeds through the Ozarks and into southern Kansas before sunrise. He stops for gas and coffee, ends up catching a couple hours sleep in the back of the Impala outside of Medicine Lodge, takes the pictures out of his bag and rifles through them before dumping them on the ground and lighting them on fire. He doesn’t stop for a motel and decent sleep on a mattress until he hits Colorado, the bracelet around his wrist itching like crazy, like the kelpie hairs suddenly have burrs embedded in them. 

Dinner’s fast food, a six pack of beer, and some crappy movie on a television with bad reception, and Dean sleeps, dreams of Sam riding horses across the ocean, Sam covered in blood and screaming, holding out his hands. They aren’t quite nightmares, but Dean wakes up every hour, gasping for breath, sweat slicking his skin, somehow falling back asleep as soon as his heart rate’s back to normal. 

He checks out the next morning, turns the key in to a woman four times his age who asks if he slept all right. When Dean says yes, she says, “That’s good, sweetie. Sometimes we get people complaining about that room.” 

Dean raises an eyebrow, asks a few questions more, and then tells her he forgot something in the bathroom, could he have the key back just for a minute to run in and get it. 

She smiles, says, “Of course,” and Dean cleanses the room of a mara demon before he leaves.

\--

Chinatown’s crowded when Dean drives into the district, people everywhere. It makes his teeth ache, sends shivers running down his spine, and he takes a deep breath after he parks the car as close to Jianjun’s as he can get. Dean gets out of the Impala, locks the door, and opens the trunk, takes out a small duffel and picks a few weapons, slides one hand over the hood as he leaves the car and heads for the old man’s apartment. 

Dean knocks on the door, and when Jianjun opens it, Dean says, “Surprise.” 

“Sam said you would be coming,” Jianjun says, adding, “He said he heard a demon try to run and hide in dreams. He was upset,” Jianjun adds. 

“What? Why?” Dean asks. 

Jianjun nods at the bracelet under Dean’s coat, the one he can’t possibly see, and says, “It is protection from _all_ demons, Dean. You did not remember that, and it upset him.” Dean opens his mouth to protest, but Jianjun says, “You go and see him. Explain to him, not to me. And pick up his _yaba_ on the way,” and slams the door in Dean’s face. 

Dean mutters to himself, walking out of the alley and back onto Stockton Street, not caring that people are giving him funny looks, edging out of his way as he crosses the street and searches for Mei Xing’s shop. 

She’s working behind the counter, of course, and she tilts her head when she sees him. Dean forces a smile onto his face, one she returns, along with a slight bow. 

“I’m on my way to see Sam. You got anything I should take over there for him?” Dean asks. 

Mei Xing studies him, then reaches down, pulls out a small brown paper bag from under the counter, turns around and reaches for something else off of the shelves behind her, putting something that looks like an unrinsed root into the bag as well as a handful of star-shaped fruits. 

“For Sam,” she says, and Dean takes the bag with a nod of thanks. 

\--

It doesn’t take long to get to Sam’s building; not that Dean really remembers how to get there, but every time he’s about ready to get lost, turned around, it’s like something’s whispering the right directions to him. Dean’s always had a good head for directions, but this has never happened before, and when he’s standing in front of Sam’s door, he looks around him, feels his skin chill even in the sunlight. 

He knocks on the door, frowns when it opens by itself, because he didn’t knock that hard. Once inside, he closes the door and lets his frown grow even deeper, because there’s no lock on the door. 

“Weird,” he mutters, then looks up the steps and calls out, “Sammy? You there? I’m coming up.” 

There’s no answer, but Dean takes the steps two at a time and drops the bag when he sees Sam curled up on the mattress, not moving. Dean crosses the room, ends up on his knees next to the mattress, pushing the blanket away from Sam’s face and tucking Sam’s hair behind one ear, off of his brother’s cold and clammy forehead. 

Sam’s eyes blink open, move around before they settle on Dean, pupils dilated and the whites of Sam’s eyes bloodshot. “Dean?” he whispers, mouth dry. “Dean, you came back?” 

“Yeah,” Dean says, voice breaking. “Yeah, I did. What can I do, Sam, huh? You sick? Need me to get you something?”

“’S too loud,” Sam whispers, shivering. “Everything’s too loud, won’t stop talking, can hear them all,” and Sam closes his eyes, starts speaking in different languages. Dean recognises the Chinese after hearing Sam talk to Jianjun, Mei Xing, recognises the French, the Latin, maybe Spanish and German, but Sam’s still going after that, doesn’t stop, and it sounds like he’s switching languages every few seconds. 

Dean looks around, then goes back and picks up the bag from Mei Xing, shakes out two brightly coloured pills from a plastic bag, and takes them back to Sam. 

“I stopped at the shop,” Dean says quietly. “Take these, they’ll help.” 

He hates watching Sam take drugs, hates the way Sam opens his eyes and looks at him with naked relief before swallowing them down dry and closing his eyes again. 

“Sleep ‘til they start,” Sam says, and then he’s snoring, twitching under the blankets. 

Dean rubs one hand over Sam’s hair, pulls up the blankets and tucks them under Sam’s chin, around Sam’s neck, and stands up, sighing. 

He tidies up the room for a few minutes, makes one pile of dirty clothes, finds a plastic bag to put garbage in, and when there’s nothing else to do, he studies the maps, looking for anything new. There’s a pin, white, pressed into a town just south of Los Angeles, and two red ones halfway between L.A. and San Francisco; Dean guesses the white must represent the _drekavac_ , but he hasn’t got a clue what the reds one are supposed to mean, except that whatever they were, they bled to death.

Dean looks back at Sam, who’s still twitching in his sleep, and then goes downstairs for a quick shower. 

He’s almost done, ready to turn the water off, when the door opens and Sam peeks around the corner, startling Dean. 

“Awake awake!” Sam crows, and grins at Dean’s muttered cursing. “New hunt, going out tomorrow, away away. Tonight, eat and dance, dance, dance.” Sam steps into the bathroom, faux-tiptoes to the wardrobe, and pulls out a pair of black jeans and a black t-shirt, rests them on the toilet seat cover. “Get dressed, my turn, go out,” he says, and disappears back upstairs, floorboards above Dean’s head creaking before the door to the bathroom even clicks closed. 

\--

Dean goes back upstairs, picks up the bag from Mei Xing and tips it, lets the contents rattle out over the small table in the middle of the room, star-shaped fruits falling out first, followed by that root, and then the small plastic bag of _yaba_. Sam moves behind him, grabs one of the fruits, breaks it open and starts chewing on the seeds. 

“What is all of that?” Dean asks.

“Snacks, snacks and pills, things to keep me moving, keep me focused,” Sam says, picking up the root and two more pieces of fruit, juggling them in the air. “Ginger for my mouth, star anise for my stomach, _yaba_ for my head, have to snack, have to focus.” Sam catches the fruits in one hand, the ginger in the other, and drops the anise onto the table, spins across the room to the box of knives and takes one out, starts carving the ginger. 

Dean can smell it, pungent and spicy-sweet, can see the juice glistening on Sam’s fingers as Sam shoves a piece into his mouth, starts chewing. Sam peels another slice off, holds it out to Dean almost shyly, and Dean smiles seeing that offer of food, smiles and feels regret, as well, that Sam’s like this now, can’t function as an adult, with anything approaching socially acceptable behaviour. 

Sam’s hand wavers, but Dean crosses the space between them and takes the piece of ginger root, nibbles one edge, eyes widening at the flavour, before Sam can take the offering back. 

Sam laughs at the look on Dean’s face, and says, too innocently, “It’s strong,” and going down the steps. 

“Where’re you going?” Dean yells, and he hears pipes creaking a moment later, remembers Sam’s rambled speech, hurrying Dean along in the shower, saying it was his turn next. Dean relaxes now that he knows Sam isn’t going to run off like last time, make Dean track him down, and he picks up one of the star-shaped fruits, sits on the mattress, and gnaws at it while he waits for his brother. 

\--

Sam comes back upstairs twenty minutes later; Dean’s on his third piece of fruit, and he holds it for Sam to see, says, “These are pretty good.” Sam grins, and Dean looks his brother over, head to foot and back up again, ignores the way his mouth dries up and says, almost reluctantly, “You look good, Sam.”

“Not as good as you,” Sam says, almost mournfully. “Too skinny now, move too much, can’t sit still,” but he shakes his head, shakes off the look in his eyes that reminds Dean of the way Sam used to be, and says, “Out, out, out!” 

Sam grabs Dean’s hand, and Dean can’t help the jolt of heat that runs through him at Sam’s touch, the way Sam’s so warm, almost feverish, _yaba_ pumping through his veins, keeping him hopped up and hyped up. Sam leads Dean down the steps, unlocks the front door, and before Dean can ask about the lock, how it keeps appearing and disappearing, Sam’s dragged him halfway down the block, still holding his hand. 

It’s a quick walk, especially keeping up with Sam, who’s ducking and weaving between tourists and residents alike. The tourists look at them askance, but the residents smile at Sam, nod at Dean, and Dean wonders if everyone knows he’s Sam’s brother, picked up the drugs for Sam and, more importantly, came back. 

They end up on Broadway Street, still crowded, a bigger street outside of Chinatown’s limits, bar after club after restaurant, all of them busy and looking high-priced. Sam goes into an alley between two buildings and Dean follows, watches as Sam knocks on the back door and looks around. 

A guy answers the door, says something to Sam in a language that sounds Asian, but not whatever Jianjun and Mei Xing were speaking, and lets the two of them in, stamps the backs of their hands. Sam winds his way through a few narrow corridors, bass lines thumping the walls and vibrating the floor, and they reach a door that Sam opens carefully before going through. 

The name of the place out front was stupid, but the club is anything but. As Dean follows Sam through the crowd along the edges, he feels the floor spring under his feet, feels the beat of the music, tripped-up house, rattle his bones. The clubs packed, the music could be worse, and better yet, Sam’s led Dean right to the bar. 

“Find me if you want,” Sam yells into Dean’s ears, and then Sam’s wading through the crowd onto the middle of the dance floor. 

Dean gets a beer, pays three times the going rate, and leans back against the bar, watching Sam dance. 

His brother’s the tallest one out there, though not by much, and he looks good, looks like he fits in with this somewhat casual crowd, lots of people wearing jeans and nice shirts, like they’re out for a good time and little else. Sam’s jeans cling to his hips and ass during the flashes of space Dean can see through, and he’s got good rhythm, his too-graceful movements fitting perfectly on the dance floor. 

As Dean watches, a few girls and guys gather around Sam, trying to match Sam’s liquid rhythm; they can’t come close, not one of them, but Sam doesn’t seem to care, doesn’t seem to even notice them, too caught up in the music. Dean wonders if it drowns out the noise of the supernatural as much as the _yaba_ does, decides he doesn’t really care when his heart stops, seeing Sam throw his head back and laugh through a wide, bright grin. 

\--

They stay for a few hours. Sam doesn’t leave the dance floor once, and for all that he hasn’t stopped moving, he doesn’t look exhausted, doesn’t look as if this has worn him out at all. Dean’s gone through a few beers, feels warm and fuzzy around the edges, not drunk but loose, easy, when Sam comes to find him. 

Sam smiles at him, tilts his head and shakes his hair, sending curls flying every which way, surprising a laugh out of Dean. 

“Having fun?” Dean asks, and Sam grins, nods. Dean looks around Sam, sees a couple girls standing at the edge of the dance floor, swaying in time to the music, watching Sam, and he says, “You’ve got groupies, man.” Sam turns and looks, turns back to Dean and rolls his eyes. Dean shakes his head, says, “No, Sam, they’re hot. You should,” and trails off, holds up his hands in surrender when Sam glares. 

Sam reaches around Dean, brushes against Dean, and Dean feels a shiver start in his arm and work its way through his entire body at the contact, flinching out of Sam’s way. Sam gets a bottle of water from the guy behind the bar and looks at Dean, eyes too old and knowing, as if he heard the muscles ripple on Dean’s body with the shudder, heard Dean’s sharp intake of breath. 

Dean opens his mouth, then closes it. He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to explain what physical contact with Sam is doing to him, because he doesn’t know, doesn’t know why he’s reacting, why he’s noticing the way Sam’s hair clings to his skin in curling tendrils, the way Sam’s clothes fit him so well, hug the muscles under Sam’s skin, the way Sam’s throat works as he chugs down the water. 

It makes Dean feel wrong, dirty, uncomfortable, to be noticing his brother this way, as if his body’s realising that Sam’s grown up to be this tweaked-out hunter, still managing to look good and smell good, despite Sam’s inability to sit still and the scent of blood and danger that seeps out of him. 

Sam looks at Dean again, water bottle empty and already given back to the bartender, and he says, “Leave?” 

Dean shakes his head, leans forward so that he doesn’t have to yell. “I’m all right. You go back out there and keep your fans entertained.” 

Sam studies Dean, then nods, just once, like whatever Dean’s said answered a question Dean didn’t hear, and he goes back out onto the dance floor, moves like he’s boneless, all feline grace and movements, hands reaching up to the ceiling, head tilted back and eyes closed. 

Another beer in hand, Dean watches his brother and wonders what the hell’s happened.

\--

They leave before the place closes, not by much, but they slip out the back, and Dean walks at a steady pace back towards Chinatown, Sam at his side, tapping a rhythm out against his thigh. At the corner of Grant and Pacific, Sam stops, turns around and looks in the direction they just walked from. 

“Sam?” Dean asks. “What’s going on?” Sam shakes his head, distant look in his eyes, one that scares Dean enough to have Dean pulling Sam to one side of the sidewalk, thumb stroking over Sam’s cheekbone. “Come on, tell me what you’re hearing.” 

“Listen,” Sam whispers.

Dean exhales, says, “Sam, you know I can’t,” stopping when Sam just _looks_ at him. Dean shuts up, listens, like Sam said to, and finally says, “I can’t hear anything except people,” after a few seconds have passed. 

Sam reaches up, presses his thumb between Dean’s eyes, on the bridge of Dean’s nose, and says, “ _Listen_.” 

Right there, on the corner of an intersection, people everywhere, Dean closes his eyes and tries to block everything out except for what Sam can hear, what Sam wants him to hear. There’s nothing that Dean can hear, and he’s just about to tell his brother that, when he catches the sound of someone screaming in terror.

His eyes open wide, and he looks around, can’t see anyone, doesn’t know where it came from. Dean starts to move, to try and find where it’s coming from, but Sam’s hand is curled in Dean’s jacket, holding him in place. 

“Sam, come on, we have to find,” he starts to say, but at the look in Sam’s eyes, he stops, face draining of colour. “Sam, what was that?” he asks. 

The sound of blood rushing through his ears drowns out everything but Sam’s answer. “ _Feeorin_ in the north. Dunsmuir, from the sound, far but not far, being hunted, stalked by a spirit, forest spirit, _ajattara_.”

Dean blinks, breathes. “Sam, there is no way in hell I just heard something two hundred and fifty miles away. It’s not possible. You’re the one with the gifts, not me.”

Sam presses his hand against Dean’s chest, over Dean’s heart, and fixes his gaze on Dean, meeting and holding Dean’s eyes. “Same blood,” he says. “Same heart. You see differences, see awareness, separation, always have, separate hunters from _hunters_.” 

This is taking effort for Sam to say, effort to drag himself close to sane speech instead of the sing-song rhythms he’s used to speaking in, and Dean waits, doesn’t say anything, tries to think about what Sam’s saying without panicking. 

“When we were young,” Sam says, struggling for words, for the ability to focus, communicate, “we pricked our fingers and bound ourselves by blood. Every time we hurt, every time we bled, it renewed. Children, yes, but power in ritual, same blood, same heart.”

“I have the same gifts? The same abilities?” Dean asks, trying to understand. 

Sam shakes his head, exhales through his teeth, looks frustrated. “Awareness. Aware of the difference, can, can,” and Sam stops, growls, and takes Dean’s hand. 

Before Dean can react, Sam’s leading Dean back to Chinatown, and they stop in front of Jianjun’s door. Sam knocks, and when the door opens, he pushes Dean inside gently. Dean stands between Sam, still outside, and Jianjun, inside. 

Sam pleads, something in the Chinese dialect the two speak, and Dean turns in time to see Jianjun purse his lips and nod. Sam relaxes, motions for Dean to go inside, and walks down the alley, into Stockton Street. 

Dean moves to follow, but Jianjun grabs his arm, says, “He will be back. Let him go for now, and when we are done, he will be waiting here for you. Come inside. I will try to explain.”


	4. Chapter 4

Sitting in Jianjun’s living room, holding a cup of green tea, Dean’s reminded of the conversation only a few days ago, the confession from both sides, he thinks now, not just his own. The old man’s sitting across from him, sipping his tea, just watching, and Dean knows he has to start this discussion, knows whatever he’s going to say has to be worded just right, or this man, this district, will take Sam deeper into their alleys and shops and keep him out, keep him away. 

Dean breathes, settles on honesty, because Jianjun knows Sam isn’t crazy. Dean does as well. 

“Sam heard something,” he says. “He told me to listen, and I heard it, too. Just for a minute, but. Fee-something, up north, about two hundred and fifty miles. He tried to explain, but I couldn’t understand. He said something about awareness, about knowing the difference between types of hunters. And,” he pauses, for a moment, “he reminded me that when we were kids, we did one of those cheesy blood-brother bonding things. Except, Sam said it worked.” 

Jianjun stares at Dean, mutters something under his breath and in another language, and scowls. Dean’s not sure if he’s offended the old man somehow, but then Jianjun says, “I did not think you would understand so much. I do not like to be wrong,” and that makes Dean feel a little better. 

“You see a difference in hunters, Sam is right, yes?” Jianjun asks. Dean shrugs, because he’s not sure what that means, but after Jianjun says, “The eyes, the eyes are the window to the soul,” Dean’s mouth goes dry. 

He swallows some of the tea, gulps it down and chokes on it, thinking about Sam’s eyes, Sara’s eyes, the eyes of any number of other people he’s met over the years, the way their eyes glitter and gleam, holding an animal awareness, feral and almost bloodthirsty. 

“Yeah,” Dean says. “There’s a difference. I always,” he says, has to stop, chug the tea, start over. “I always knew who to be careful around. Sam knew, too, but either Dad didn’t or he didn’t care.” 

“What children do has power,” Jianjun says after a moment. Dean feels like his world’s just been ripped away, like he’s standing on air and ready to fall at any minute, but he listens. “What you two did, it had power. It bound you together, gave you the same blood, the same heart, but not the same gifts. Sam’s gifts are his own, just as yours is your own, but because your gift is the way it is, because you can _see_ , you can also hear. Perhaps you took that from him, or perhaps he gave it to you, I do not know.” 

Dean blinks, doesn’t notice when Jianjun refills his teacup, just downs the flavoured water without a second thought, sitting there. 

Its five minutes before Dean says, “I can tap into Sam’s gifts, just a little.” 

“When you are close to him,” Jianjun adds with a nod and a smile. “When you are close and you open yourself up to the possibility, you can hear. Perhaps you can share all of his senses, who is to say?” 

“Sam,” Dean says, then stops. Jianjun sits there, pours more tea, waits. “Something’s happening,” Dean says, looking down, unable to meet the old man’s eyes. “Something I can’t explain, and it’s only happening now, I don’t understand.” 

Jianjun hums, unspoken way of asking for more information at the same time he’s saying it’s all right if Dean doesn’t want to talk about it. Or, at least, that’s what Dean gets out of the noise. 

“Today, since I’ve been back,” Dean says, faltering. “When I look at him, or when we touch, it’s like. I mean, I’ve never, it’s always been women, not men, and now, but he’s my brother. I don’t _understand_. What’s happening?” 

“What children do has power,” Jianjun says, standing up. “The bond you both swore then has been renewed, time and time again. In some cultures, you would be considered one person, sworn and promised to one another.” He brushes one hand across Dean’s shoulder, and adds, “There were those in Greece who fought only with their lovers. Warriors, who knew one another inside and out. There is no shame in that. Brothers, blood-bonded, hunters; who is to say what the gods plan for us on the day of our birth, what the Dragon King holds in storehouses for our lives?” 

Jianjun leaves, quiet steps as he shuffles out of the living room, and Dean sits there, frozen, trying to let it all settle in his mind. 

\--

Dean doesn’t know what time it is when he finally stands, knees popping with the movement. He looks around for the old man, doesn’t see him anywhere, so he shows himself to the door. Dean opens it, and Sam’s across the alley, looking up at the sky. It’s raining, and Sam’s mouth is open, trying to catch raindrops.

“You used to do that when you were five,” Dean says, before he can stop himself. 

Sam tilts his head down, looks at Dean, and then turns his eyes back to the sky, tongue sticking out. 

Dean stands there, watches Sam until Sam gets bored of that and twirls, tossing Dean a star anise. Dean catches it, holds it in his hands, and moves closer to Sam. Sam freezes, stands there, and Dean breaks the fruit open, takes out one seed. 

“I hope you realise I have no idea what I’m doing,” Dean says, meeting Sam’s eyes, wondering why he never saw the difference in them before Sam left for Stanford, wondering how many other things he’s missed in his life. “Sam, I don’t understand any of this, but I’m going to try. Okay?”

Sam nods, just once, and says, “Okay, Dean.”

Dean takes a deep breath, reaches up and strokes Sam’s bottom lip, feels goosebumps race up and down his spine when Sam opens his mouth, licks the tip of Dean’s thumb. Dean juggles the seed in his hand, holds it between his thumb and forefinger, and pushes it into Sam’s mouth, fingers lingering inside, feeling the wet heat of Sam’s breath, the sharp lines of Sam’s teeth. 

He takes his fingers out, pushes Sam’s mouth closed, and watches, numb and still somehow burning, as Sam chews and swallows. 

“Sleep tonight, hunt tomorrow?” Sam asks once he’s done, voice careful, eyes careful, foot tapping against the sidewalk. 

“Sounds like a plan,” Dean says, and curls his hand in Sam’s, lets his brother lead him away from Jianjun’s. 

\--

It’s the best night of sleep Dean remembers having in years. They both spread out on the mattress, back to back, knives under the pillows and fighting over the blankets. Sam wakes up after a few hours, skittish and needing to move, and Dean falls back asleep, breathing in the smell of Sam, soaked into the fabric of the pillow. Liquorice and night, like some great big prowling cat, and when Dean finally opens his eyes an hour after sunrise, Sam is pacing in front of the maps, looking intently at the one of California, muttering to himself. 

Dean sits up, stretches and cracks his neck, and sees cartons on the rickety table, along with a new bag of _yaba_ , filled with twice as many pills as usual. “G’morning,” he says, grimacing at the taste in his mouth, but Sam turns around and gives him a grin that seems brighter than the sun before bounding over, picking up one of the cartons and a pair of chopsticks on the way. 

“Breakfast, not waffles, Li’s _baozi_ ,” Sam says, and uses the chopsticks to deftly pluck some kind of steamed bun from the carton. He crouches down, offers the bun to Dean, who takes a bite, chews, and swallows. 

Dean thinks about it for a minute, then says, “I’m going to eat that whole carton after I shower.” He leans forward, grabs the rest of the bun in his teeth, and goes downstairs to get cleaned, hearing Sam’s laughter fill the apartment. 

\--

They leave after Dean’s emptied one carton and half of another, Sam watching him with a steady gaze that doesn’t at all match the way his hands are playing with piece after piece of ginger root, the way his feet are bouncing on the floor, the way he stands up every so often to study the maps. 

Dean’s not sure how long Sam’s going to be able to sit still in the car, but Sam had lasted from the preserve to Chinatown last week without too much trouble, so Dean knows they can probably still make it up to Dunsmuir in one day, even if they do end up stopping every hour so Sam can let off some steam. 

\--

They drive with the windows down and the music up, get stuck in the back-up from an accident halfway through Oakland on their way to Vallejo, and end up getting north of the water around lunchtime. Sam’s legs are jumping, fingers keeping the beat to something other than the mix-tape Dean’s blaring and getting a headache from, but he’s not as bad as Dean had expected. 

Dean asks about it, how come Sam seems almost steady, and Sam looks out of the window while he’s muttering a response. 

“Come again?” Dean asks, frowning, because Sam hasn’t actually avoided answering a question since Dean found him in the preserve. 

“Wanted to hear, not enough to move, didn’t want to be trouble, too much trouble, always causing trouble,” Sam finally says, and Dean looks over his sunglasses, sees pain lines crinkling around the corners of Sam’s eyes. 

Dean’s tempted to pull the car over, shake some sense into Sam, maybe some _yaba_ as well, but he just says, “You’re not trouble, Sam. Not for me,” and doesn’t say anything else. 

Half an hour later, when Sam’s rubbing his temples, Dean leans over and opens the glove box, lets Sam decide whether or not to open the brown paper bag inside. 

Sam does, takes out one pill and swallows it down, leans back and falls asleep for fifteen minutes, snoring, while the methamphetamine works its way to his bloodstream and the caffeine hits his nervous system. 

\--

Seven hours after Dean started the car in Chinatown, he’s pulling in to Dunsmuir. The accident in Oakland, another one near Colusa, and a few stops for Sam made a four hour drive nearly twice that, but Dean’s not bothered, for once. Instead, he’s focused as they pull into a motel parking lot, trying to find a way to shove the screaming of the _feeorin_ to one side long enough to deal with getting a room, finding some place to get some food. 

Sam’s watching him, head tilted, teeth grinding, as if he’s only waiting for Dean to say that this is enough, that this is crazy, insane, that he’s done with it, and Dean wonders where along the line Sam lost all faith in him. He remembers when Sam left, though, three years ago, remembers what he said to his little brother, and knows exactly where it comes from. 

“Wait here,” Dean says, and pretends it doesn’t sound like pleading. Sam gets out of the Impala and starts pacing, but he’s not going anywhere, so Dean gets out of the car as well, goes in and flirts with the girl behind the counter, asks for a room, and winks when she pops her gum and ends up with pink goo all over nose. 

He goes back outside, looks for Sam, and doesn’t see him. Dean’s about ready to panic, but then hands are covering his eyes, hands he _knows_ are Sam’s, warm and dry, thumbs stroking along Dean’s hairline, the curve of his earlobes. 

“Need to move,” Sam whispers, and the sensation of breath on the back of his neck makes Dean shudder. “Dean, I need to go, need to run, need to hunt. You need.”

Dean cuts him off, moves Sam’s hands away from his face and turns around, raises an eyebrow at his brother. “I need to go with you. Don’t worry about me, okay? We’re sticking together on this one.” 

Sam bites his lower lip, tugs it in between his teeth, and chews on it for a long handful of seconds, before he nods and shrugs at the same time, gives Dean a hesitant smile. “Go now?” 

\--

Much like Dean’s first trip into Chinatown, Sam directs him, but it’s different as well. This time, Dean can hear the creatures just like Sam can, can’t get as good a reading on the direction as Sam, but it’s his first time tracking something this way. 

They end up pulling off of a small road onto an even smaller, dirt road, and leave the Impala just inside the tree-line, forest looming out in front of them, covering hills and mountains. 

“We aren’t camping, are we?” Dean asks, popping the trunk and grabbing a handgun, tucking that into his jeans before picking up a shotgun, loading it with iron rounds. “Because I still fucking hate camping.” 

Sam tilts his head, trails his eyes over the trees, and finally says, “No, no camping. Find _feeorin_ , go back, _ajattara_ tomorrow, before nightfall.” 

Dean pumps the shotgun, grins, and says, “Let’s go find them, then.” 

\--

Inside of the forest, it’s dark and quiet, almost unnaturally so, the shrieks of the _feeorin_ the only noise Dean can hear. Sunlight filters down in thin strands through the canopy of branches and leaves, and if Dean thought _he_ was on high alert, that’s nothing compared to seeing Sam hunt. 

Dean’s sticking to the worn footpaths as much as possible, creeping along and trying not to make too much noise, but Sam’s melting in and out trees and bushes like a shadow. Dean blinks and Sam’s not there, blinks again and Sam is, nothing in between to signal the difference. Sam’s eyes are glittering, and if he had been holding a knife, Dean’s convinced he’d be flashbacking to that night in the preserve. Instead, Sam’s hands are empty and there’s no blood on him, won’t be, if Dean’s got anything to say about. 

Sam stops once they get a couple miles into the woods, holds a hand out behind him that Dean walks into. Dean glares, and Sam grins, as if he’s trying not to laugh. 

“They’re here, right here,” Sam whispers, and Dean’s glare melts into puzzlement, because there hasn’t been a change in the volume of the shrieks and he doesn’t notice anything different about this section of trees. 

He steps back, turns around slowly, shotgun held in front of him like a talisman, and when he’s made a full rotation, he stops and stares. 

Sam’s standing there, watching him, with two little fairies on his shoulders, and one nesting in his hair. 

“They’re not screaming,” Dean says, and the fairy on top of Sam’s head covers her mouth and giggles, while the other two lean forward, look at each other around Sam’s neck, and start to laugh. 

Sam’s grin just widens. 

\--

“So you’re Aina,” Dean says, talking to the fairy perched on Sam’s head. He’s serious, and seriously talking to a _tiny green fairy_ sitting on his brother’s _head_ , hands fisted in Sam’s hair as if he’s a horse, and if this doesn’t say something about his day-to-day experiences, Dean doesn’t know what would. 

The fairy nods, says something in a tinkling rush of words that sound more like the space where water and air meet, not language. 

Dean frowns as Sam laughs, shaking enough to dislodge the two fairies sitting on his shoulders. They hover in the air, wings fluttering behind them, and start chattering at Sam, one of them shaking a finger at Sam, the other with her hand on her hips. Sam replies in that same language, ebbs and flows like waves, like air currents, and the sound of it, delicate and willowy, coming out of Sam’s mouth, turns Dean on harder and faster than anything has in his entire life.

Whatever Sam’s said seems to have pacified the two in the air, and they move, darting and soaring around Dean, until they’re sitting on _his_ shoulders, shifting into the leather jacket and petting it, their flickering wings sending small breezes of air onto Dean’s neck. 

“What’d she say?” Dean asks. 

“Make fun of her name, she’ll make fun of you,” Sam answers, which Dean thinks isn’t an answer at all. 

“I’m trying to be nice, here,” Dean says, directing his words at the fairy on Sam’s head, and she tosses her hair back, combs through it with one hand, talking to Sam, Dean guesses, because he doesn’t know what the hell they’re going on about. 

Something she says makes Sam grin, and then the grin falls as she goes on. 

“What? What is it?” Dean asks, ignoring the chittering of the fairies on his shoulders, the way they’re touching his hair, talking to one another, sending words to Sam and Aina every so often. 

Sam doesn’t reply to Dean, answers Aina in that wisping language, and as Dean listens, the two start to argue. Sam’s words get louder and hotter, and she’s yanking on his hair and leaning down, kicking tiny glass-clad feet on Sam’s forehead, leaving marks. 

“Hey, hold on,” Dean says, but the fairies on his shoulders fly off, hover in front of him, between the two brothers. 

Aina finally gets off of Sam’s head, moves so she can stare at him, and she pokes the tip of his nose once, twice, three times, to punctuate whatever she’s saying. Sam goes cross-eyed, following her hand, and Aina sighs, puts her hands on her hips, and says something. Sam chews the inside of his cheek, then sounds like he asks a reluctant question that she snaps down. 

Dean’s fascinated, watching the way Sam’s facial expressions change, watching the way he tries to plead with a six-inch tall fairy and completely fails. Finally, when Sam’s shoulders droop and the two fairies Dean thinks of as his circle around Aina in triumph, Dean says, “Man, what the _hell_?” 

“Hunt tomorrow, _ajattara_ , Aina comes with us,” Sam says, resigned tone matching the kicked puppy-dog look. “Aina says you should stay away, stay safe.” 

Dean straightens up, turns his gaze on the fairy and says, “Nuh-uh, no way, not gonna happen. You and Sam go hunting, I’m coming, too.” 

Aina swoops through the air until she’s right in front of Dean and Dean has to lean his head back to keep his eyes both on her and focused. She tilts her head, curls a piece of hair around a slender finger, and starts speaking. 

Dean cuts her off, says, “Listen, lady. I don’t care what you think, I am not letting Sam go hunting without me.” 

Sam steps closer, body vibrating with energy even if he’s just standing there without moving, and reaches out, runs his fingertips down Dean’s jacket. The two fairies, Dean doesn’t know their names, start cooing, flying in and out of the two brothers, as Sam says, “Not fast enough, not strong enough.” 

“Sam,” Dean says, hurt and angry. “Sam, come _on_.”

Aina sings something, pokes Sam’s shoulder, and Sam says, “Not safe,” face grumpy, arms folding across his chest. “Won’t be safe.” 

Dean blinks, feels himself ease down. Sam’s not saying Dean’s a bad hunter, he’s saying Dean won’t be safe, which might sound the same but Dean knows, looking at Sam’s eyes, that it isn’t. “Sam, it’s never safe. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop. You tell me what this _ajattara_ is, how we kill it, and I’ll be fine. Always am.” 

Sam doesn’t look as if he believes Dean, the three fairies are all talking at once, but Sam nods once, and then says, “You sleep,” and he leads Dean back to the Impala. 

\--

The fairies stop at the edge of the forest, Aina fluttering close to Sam while the other two twist and turn in the air, making strange patterns before they fly out of sight. Dean waits for Sam to get inside the car, but Sam doesn’t, just hovers at the edge of the tree-line, twisting his hands together. 

“Sam, get in the car,” Dean says, leaning against the Impala, not going anywhere unless Sam does. 

Sam shakes his head, says, “Need to run, need to, need to move,” and he looks at the forest with something approaching longing. “Be back. Here, tomorrow, be back. Eight,” and he might as well be begging, using those crinkled eyes to plead with Dean. 

Dean doesn’t like it, not one bit, but Sam’s looking at him, and he has to trust that Sam knows what he’s doing, has to trust that Sam will be all right. Dean purses his lips, then reaches in the Impala and takes out the bag of _yaba_ , tosses it at Sam, who catches it with one hand, still looking right at Dean. 

“Tomorrow morning, right here, eight o’clock,” Dean says, and Sam’s grins lights up his entire face. “If you aren’t here,” Dean adds, trailing off. 

Sam nods, turns, and melts into the trees like smoke, looking back once at Dean, as if to say ' _thank you_ '. 

\--

The motel’s nice, clean, but cheesy. Apparently Dunsmuir’s all about their history, has everything decorated to look like the ‘20s and ‘30s, even this far outside of town, but Dean can’t complain when he finally gets in the shower and the tub’s clean, the water hot. 

After a shower, he goes back out and hits up a local bar, plays a couple games of pool and has dinner, along with a few beers, leaves with two hundred in cash in his back pocket and a few of the locals clapping his shoulder, telling him he’s good, thanks for the game. It’s strange, that sort of reaction, but compared to six-inch tall green fairies, not _that_ strange, so Dean’s guard is down as he walks outside, stands for a minute on the sidewalk, breathing in the mountain air. 

Dunsmuir’s a tourist town, is busy for such a small place, but it’s nothing like the city, and this high up in California, mountains and trees all around, the air’s clean, hits his lungs like pure oxygen. It’s enough to make him a little dizzy, but then he sneezes, laughs to himself as he walks to the Impala, parked across the street and down a few.

Dean’s halfway there when the feeling of dizziness comes back, that and his stomach rumbling like it’s not too happy with the fried chicken he gulped down an hour ago. He reaches out, grabs hold of the side of a building for support, and swallows bile down. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to stay, so he hunches over, but then the feeling goes away completely, leaving him looking around, on edge. Something’s going on in Dunsmuir, and Dean thinks it might be the _ajattara_ , whatever’s upsetting the _feeorin_. 

He heads back to the motel, pops open the laptop and finds a wireless signal, surfs onto the internet looking for any and all information on the _ajattara_ , what it is, what it does, how to kill it. Wikipedia comes up first, like always, and the information there seems to bear out what the more hidden occult sites are saying, that the _ajattara_ ’s a female spirit, half-demon, that lives in forests and likes to make people sick, likes to kill things and drink their blood. None of them say how to kill one, but Sam said this thing was a spirit, more that than a demon, so rock-salt should keep her entertained while they track down whatever it is keeping her here and burning it. 

Dean sits back, turns off the laptop and listens to it power down, listens as its humming stops and the only noises come from cars passing outside and a few animals out in the forest. It’s quiet, the heater not kicking on yet, still warm for this time of year, and Dean lets his eyes droop closed, thinks about Sam. 

There’s nothing strange about what’s going on, nothing that he can feel, and that’s almost worse than the reality of what he’s considering, of what he thinks about in the back of his head when he looks at Sam now. Letting Sam go hunting all night with the _feeorin_ , not being there to watch over him, not being there to _be there_ , and all Dean wants to do is go to sleep, curled up next to his brother, Sam’s feet tucked between Dean’s, Sam’s hand draped over Dean’s stomach, fingers tickling, moving, even in his sleep, Sam’s nose rubbing against Dean’s neck, cold and pointed, making its own space in Dean’s skin. 

Dean _wants_ , and it should scare him, but he remembers being nine and using one of John’s knives to slice his wrist open, not too deep but deep enough to bleed, remembers watching his five year old brother do the same thing, hands already sure of a knife’s grip, already at ease with how deep to stroke, how much pressure to use. He remembers the smell of their blood, remembers the shock of pressing his wrist against Sam’s, remembers the words he said and Sam echoed in a half-lisp, eyes wide with childish wonder. John had been gone and by the time their father returned, there was nothing to show for what they’d done. 

Nothing on their skin, at any rate; it went deeper than flesh, into blood and heart, and if Dean focuses just a little bit more, he can almost feel Sam, running wild through the woods, at home in the night, a natural hunter, a predator that even the _feeorin_ can’t keep up with. He can almost feel the breeze on his cheeks, hear the rhythm of Sam’s heart, even, untouched, and as he falls asleep, he remembers what Sara said, on the reservation, and wonders if that sound he hears, like singing, is the _feeorin_ or something else, welcoming Sam to a place Dean can’t follow.

\--

Dean pulls up to the edge of the forest a few minutes before eight, not wanting to seem overeager, but, at the same time, wanting desperately to see his brother, make sure Sam’s okay. Sam’s not there when he parks and gets out of the Impala, grabs a shotgun loaded with rock salt from the trunk, along with a can of gasoline and a small jar of salt, but as he closes the trunk and looks up, he sees Sam leaning against one of the trees, Aina fluttering at his side. 

Dean walks over to Sam, studies his brother, the wild curl of Sam’s hair, full of leaves, the dirt smudges on Sam’s face, the beaming grin Sam’s wearing. 

“Sleep? Sleep and eat, get sleep, ready, ready?” Sam asks, chirruping away almost as fast as the tiny green fairy does in the next moment. Dean doesn’t pay her any attention, but looks at Sam’s eyes, the manic, feral awareness in them and the worry deeper down, hesitant and cavernous. 

“Let’s get the bitch,” Dean says. Aina flies out, swoops down and grabs Dean’s jacket, like she’s going to tug him along behind her, and as he falls into line behind her, entering the forest, he can’t help muttering, “Hold me closer, tiny dancer.”

Sam, somewhere around them, already part of the forest and invisible, laughs. 

\--

Dean follows Aina, who’s flying loops in front of him, carrying a miniature bow with a quiver of arrows on her back. He’s not sure how long they’ve been walking through the forest, isn’t sure how far they’ve travelled or where they are in relation to the Impala, but the little fairy’s still moving along, and Sam’s still somewhere around. The forest is quiet, too quiet, but every time Dean starts to worry, Sam’s there, brushing a hand across Dean’s jacket, breathing in Dean’s ear, opening himself up in some way that Dean can feel deep inside, feel without understanding how. 

He’s just stepping over a fallen tree when a sudden wave of nausea hits and the feeling of Sam gets swept away by a wave of bile. Aina’s chittering at him, hovering in front of his head, the end of her bow poking at his cheek again and again, but all Dean can do is sit, straddle the tree trunk and swallow down vomit. 

“Must be the _ajattara_ ,” he says, and tries to look up though now his stomach’s cramping, making him groan and double over in pain. Everything’s hidden through a sheen of tears, but Dean still looks, says, “Sam? Sam, where are you?” 

There’s no answer, nothing but a sudden drag-slide-thump of something over the ground. Dean makes an attempt to stand up, but he cries out in agony as shooting aches drive outwards and upwards from his stomach. His nose starts bleeding a moment later, and all he can hear is the crunch of leaves, the thud of something close to footsteps but not quite there. 

All of his muscles lock up at once, and the shotgun drops from his hands, hitting the ground. Aina’s saying something, loudly and quickly, but, a moment later, she squeaks and then Dean doesn’t hear anything else from her. Instead, there’s a cold, scaly hand tilting his head to one side. 

“Fresh blood, fresh meat,” Dean hears. The _ajattara_ , it has to be, and she’s drawing fingers down Dean’s neck, leaving a line of welts in the wake of her nails. “Stupid human hunter,” she says, and Dean feels a claw snag some of the blood dripping out of his nose, hears her suck on it, and give a low grumble of pleasure at the taste. “Out here all alone. Mine, now,” she murmurs, and Dean feels breath, rank and poisonous on his cheek. 

“ _Mine_ ,” Dean hears next, but this time its Sam, and a moment later, the _ajattara_ ’s hissing, pushing away from Dean. 

She must be distracted, dealing with Sam, because the wave of sickness, of pain, recedes enough so that Dean can reach down for the shotgun, wipe tears off of his face and out of his eyes, focus to see what’s going on. Once he can, his breath disappears, lost in the face of what he’s seeing. 

Sam’s fighting the _ajattara_ , doesn’t look as if the sickness she emits is having any effect on him, even though Dean still feels like he could throw up for days given the opportunity. The two are rolling on the ground, and Dean can see her, half woman, half dragon, scales covering her body, claws extended from her hands and feet. She’s kicking and swiping at Sam, who evades the claws like they’re nothing, both of them hissing and growling at each other. 

Dean can’t get a shot, not with the way the two of them are banging around, bouncing off of trees, rolling through the brush. Even when they both stand up and circle each other, predators sizing one another up, making crunch-steps over the _ajattara_ ’s scales littering the ground, pulled out by Sam’s fingers, Dean can’t find it in himself to shoot, not when Sam’s grinning, teeth bared, laughing.

The _ajattara_ hisses at Sam, who laughs harder and crouches, eyes glittering, feral and bloodthirsty, one hand on the ground, the other holding a knife Dean doesn’t remember seeing before, curved and wicked sharp, gleaming silver and reflecting the shine of Sam’s teeth after his tongue swipes across them. 

Sam waits there, doesn’t move, and the _ajattara_ rocks back and forth in place, eyes pinned on Sam. 

Both of them move at once, like they’re responding to a signal Dean missed, and Dean can’t tell where each begins and ends, can’t tell if the flashes of light he sees are the _ajattara_ ’s claws or Sam’s knife, but then they fall apart, and the _ajattara_ is littered with cuts, bleeding everywhere, and Sam’s unhurt, smiling, shaking blood-spattered hair out of his face. 

“ _Mine_ ,” Sam says again, and despite the smile, his voice is low and dangerous, possessive and territorial, and knowing Sam’s saying that about him makes Dean shiver, makes his cock twitch and his palms sweat. 

The _ajattara_ growls, and Sam growls back, deeper rumble, and then Sam springs himself at her. She extends her claws, and Dean’s terrified that Sam’s going to impale himself on them, but Sam spins in the air and, instead of meeting her claws, he lands to the side and takes her head off with one clean swipe of his knife. 

Sam stands above the body, covered with blood, and looks at Dean with hunt-bright eyes, knife in one hand, holding the _ajattara_ ’s head in the other. 

“Burn now,” he says. “All done, nothing left but fire.”

Dean stands up, walks unsteadily to the body, the scales covering human breasts, the sheen of oil in sunlight flooding over a tail, tail spikes. He uncaps the small jar of salt, covers the body and the head, when Sam drops it on the ground. The gasoline is next, and the smell of that, combined with the blood, is enough to make Dean’s stomach turn. He pulls out the lighter, considers it for a moment, and then offers it to Sam. 

Sam looks at it, then smiles, and shakes his head as he moves to stand behind Dean. Dean flicks the lighter on, and when Sam wraps his arms around Dean’s waist, leans his chin on Dean’s shoulder, Dean sets the _ajattara_ on fire and watches her burn, smells fire, smoke, blood, and his brother.


	5. Chapter 5

They watch without moving until she’s gone, nothing more than noxious fumes and a small pile of ash. Sam seems content to stand there, body still, relaxed, and Dean wonders if killing things, giving in to the hunter inside of his brother, eases something in Sam, or if he hasn’t had his _yaba_ in a few hours.

“Where were you?” Dean finally asks, and he curses himself, his voice, for sounding so small, so plaintive. 

“Had to let her get close enough,” Sam murmurs. “Had to. Tricked her. Sense me, otherwise, and run away, run, run away. Never,” he says, then pauses, and Dean can feel him swallow. “Never let her hurt you.” 

He shudders as Sam licks the welts the _ajattara_ left on his neck, and the slow rasp of tongue against pained skin drives a gasped breath from between Dean’s lips. It burns for a second, then fades, and when Sam’s done, Dean lifts a hand, feels his neck smooth, unmarred. 

“Mark of a hunter,” Sam says, and he wrenches himself away from Dean, twirls around that little spot of the forest until he’s standing across from his brother. 

Dean realises, in that moment, just how different Sam is now. He’s so much more at home in his skin than he ever was before, even if that skin is the skin of a deadly predator, just as strong as werewolves, just as fast as forest spirits, just as deadly as any demon Dean’s ever met. Sam’s covered in the _ajattara_ ’s blood, has it smeared on his cheek where he rubbed against Dean’s shoulder, is still holding that knife, and if any other hunter, if their _father_ , was out here, they wouldn’t hesitate to take Sam down.

And yet. And yet, Sam’s gentle with Dean, protective and worried, as if Dean is part of Sam’s territory, part of Sam’s _family_ , and Dean’s finally beginning to realise how important that is, finally starting to see what Jianjun and Sara tried telling him before, that Sam, choosing Dean, means something far bigger than Dean ever thought. 

“I trust you,” Dean says, and the moment the words leave his mouth, he knows they’re true. Even when the _ajattara_ ’s lips were next to his neck, he trusted Sam. “But dude, next time? Warn me, okay?” 

Sam tilts his head, smiles a little, and then says, “Deal.” 

\--

Aina picks that moment to flutter back into sight, and she goes right for Sam, chattering something that Dean thinks is a rebuke. Sam stands there and listens, takes it, until she says something and points at Dean, at which point Sam leans forward, gets in her face, and snarls. She stops, looks taken aback but not scared, and then flies to one side, looks at Sam and then Dean, before turning back to Sam and asking something. 

Sam replies, and Aina starts to smile, and when Sam frowns, even Dean can’t hold back a laugh. Sam, so tall, looking so completely confused and stunned by a six-inch tall green fairy, but then Aina’s right in Dean’s face, and he gets it, he really does. 

She reaches out, puts one hand on Dean’s forehead, and when she speaks again, there’s an echo behind the words and in his head, something approaching English. 

“Whoa, try that again,” Dean says, and he opens the part of himself that wants to reach out for Sam, still new at this but willing to try. 

Aina speaks, and this time, Dean hears, “ _Thankyouthankyouthankyou!_ ” 

He grins, says, “You’re welcome.”

“ _The large hunter, he says_ ,” and she pauses, looks back at Sam, chatters at him and waits for a response before looking at Dean again. “ _We want to give you a gift for helping us. The dragon-spirit has killed so many._ ” 

Dean shakes his head and says, “We don’t need a gift. It’s our job. Well, my job, Sam’s,” he stops, searches for a word, and finally says, “calling. His calling.” 

“ _Give you one anyway,_ ” Aina chirrups, dismissively. “ _The large hunter says you can pick, but I will offer, agreed?_ ” Dean shrugs, and Aina says, “ _I can give him focus. It will still be loud, but it will not be all at once. He can choose what to hear and when to hear it._ ” 

She’s turned piercing eyes on Dean, and in the back of his mind, the part that isn’t blown away by the offer, he wonders if it’s some kind of test. He doesn’t care though, because this could help Sam, take Sam off the drugs and give him a chance at sanity, at being something closer to normal. He wants to say yes, immediately, but he looks at Sam, Sam who’s looking back at Dean, eyes bright and watchful, blood clumping on his eyelashes. 

“That’s his decision,” Dean finally says, forcing the words out from around a lump in his throat. “If you do something to Sam, it has to be his decision.” 

Aina smiles, turns to Sam, who looks at Dean, shrugs, and says, “You decide. Trust you.” 

“ _It will not be without effect,_ ” Aina adds, slowly. “ _Something will be changed in him. Don't know what, can't say, but something._ ”

Dean thinks of Sam, thinks of Sam’s free will and the pain Sam experiences when he doesn’t take the _yaba_ , thinks of sitting still and travelling across the country, thinks of Chinatown and the way people there look at them both. He thinks about what Jianjun said, of how people in their city-village listen to Sam, thinks about what Sara said, of how the great hunter was never happy, and he whispers, “Do it.” 

Dean doesn’t blink as fairy after fairy comes out of the trees around them, though he wonders how long they’ve all been hiding out of sight. The entire clan of _feeorin_ , he thinks, and they surround Sam, circling him too fast for Dean to see, cloaking Sam in whirling green and fluttering wings. Sam cries out in pain and Dean moves to help him without thinking, held back by Aina, who’s watching. 

Sam cries out again, shrieks in agony, and Dean watches with wide eyes as the _feeorin_ start to fly away in groups of two and three. Sam’s on his knees, head bowed, chest heaving, and Dean can only look, frozen, caught, as Sam lifts his head and turns dark, dangerous, _wicked_ eyes on him. 

Sam stays kneeling, Dean standing, and they look at each for long, silent minutes, until Sam’s lips form a warm, half-curved smile, and he says, “Hello, Dean.” 

\--

Dean doesn’t know how long he stands there, looking at Sam, and the way Sam’s body is so still, muscles loose, ready for anything and everything, eyes focused on Dean. Dean shivers, because he’s starting to realise that having Sam’s complete attention is an intense experience, would be terrifying if he wasn’t able to open himself to Sam and feel Sam’s happiness, Sam’s longing, Sam’s possessiveness. 

“Sam,” he whispers, and in the next minute, as if that’s all Sam needed to hear, Sam’s right there, right in front of him, lifting a hand and cupping Dean’s cheek, thumb stroking Dean’s cheekbone. 

“I’m here,” Sam says. “I’m here.” 

Aina flutters between them, sits on Sam’s wrist, and says, “ _You’re here, he’s here, I’m leaving. Thankyou!_ ” before she flies away, swooping through the air, making circles and dive-bombing dust motes floating through the air. 

Dean watches her go, it’s easier than looking Sam in the eyes, and he coughs, shifts. “What was that crack about her name, anyway?” he asks, and looks at a spot between Sam’s eyes. 

Sam laughs, low and warm, and takes his hands off of Dean’s face, smoothes them across Dean’s shoulders. “Usually heads of _feeorin_ clans have warrior names,” he says, tone matching the laugh from a moment before, and hearing it makes Dean’s head swim. “But ‘Aina,’ in their language, means joy.”

“Huh,” Dean mutters, and then Sam’s leaning forward, drawing his teeth down Dean’s neck, the side the _ajattara_ didn’t touch. 

Dean’s eyes close, one hand reaches up to cup Sam’s neck, tangle in the hair curling there, sliding through blood. He knows, now more than ever, that Sam could kill him and it wouldn’t take any effort at all, knows this with all he is, but knows more that Sam never would. 

The line Sam makes stops at the juncture of neck and shoulder, nose pushed under Dean’s jacket, and then Sam leans up, licks Dean’s earlobe and whispers, “It goes both ways, Dean.” 

Dean leans back, looks at Sam, and asks, “What?” 

“What I said before, to the _ajattara_ ,” Sam answers, looking steadily at him. “It goes both ways.”

It takes Dean a second to catch the reference, and then fire floods through his veins when he realises. He looks up at Sam, eyes wide, and sees the glitter in Sam’s eyes, the deep, endless awareness he saw in Sara, traces of mania and the rhythm of the hunt even deeper. 

“Slowly,” Sam says, reaching out and tracing his thumb across Dean’s cheekbone. The movement is tender but Sam’s touch is electric, filled with restrained brutality. “I don’t know what I’m doing either.” 

\--

Sam leads Dean out of the forest, back to the Impala. Neither of them say a word. Sam’s dancing around his brother, but this time its different, like Sam’s doing this because he’s at home here, wants to, not because something inside of him, some madness, is urging him onwards. Dean wants to ask how much of Sam’s actions before were the result of the _yaba_ , how much the result of hearing so much, but he doesn’t, can’t break the silence between them. 

The silence lasts all the way back to the motel, until Sam breaks it, says, “I’m going to shower,” and trails a finger down his face, draws it off and raises an eyebrow at the blood, wrinkles his nose. He stops, though, gives Dean a considering look, and adds, “Unless you’d rather I not?” 

Dean gapes, and Sam laughs, goes into the bathroom, shuts the door but doesn’t lock it. Dean hears the water turn on, and sits on the edge of the bed, shaking his head. 

He watches TV, orders a pizza, and then goes to shower once Sam’s done. Food’s there when he gets out of the bathroom, and Dean stuffs a couple pieces down while Sam studies an atlas with a faraway look on his face. 

“What are you hearing?” Dean finally asks. 

“The loudest thing,” Sam answers immediately. “Something coming from South Dakota. It sounds like some kind of nature spirit, maybe a _kappa_. I don’t think it’s out to hurt anything.” Sam pauses, says, “I think it wants to go home.” Dean’s heart stops, he loses his appetite, and Sam turns around, gives him an apologetic smile. “Sorry,” he says. “You tired? You look tired.” 

Dean raises an eyebrow, says, “Dude, feel like I could sleep for a fucking week,” and can’t help blushing like a nervous virgin when Sam’s gaze rakes over him, sharp, hot, and assessing. 

Sam sees it, sees it and laughs, before looking pointedly at the second bed. 

\--

Halfway through the night, Dean wakes up, looks around with sleep-clogged eyes. Sam’s standing at the window, muscles in his arms and tendons in his neck outlined by the moon, pyjama pants and t-shirt hanging off of him in the same clean lines. 

" _Yaba_?" he mutters. 

Sam turns around, smiles at Dean, shakes his head. "Won't need it anymore," he says. "It helped me focus; I can do that on my own, now."

Dean hums, then pats the bed. “C’me ‘ere,” Dean mumbles, scooting over in his bed, and Sam’s sliding in under the covers a moment later, tangling up his feet with Dean’s. Dean hums, curls into Sam, and falls back asleep, nose burrowing into Sam’s neck, Sam’s hand playing with the hair on the back of his neck. 

\--

It’s a _kappa_ in South Dakota, and Dean fills a fish tank with water and drives back to San Francisco with the water demon in the back seat. Sam laughs every time he looks at it, laughs and wriggles in his seat, like he’s relearning the feel of the Impala, marking out a space for himself. The closer they get to the Bay, the more Dean can’t stand to see Sam shift, move, because soon the seat will be cold, empty again. Once he delivers Sam back to Chinatown, back to his family, things will go back to the way they had been; Dean hopes they won’t, hopes with everything he is, but he’s not going to set himself up for a fall. 

The _kappa_ jumps into the Bay and thanks them in the peculiar mix of clicks and squawks that make up its language. Sam says something back, bows low, and the _kappa_ disappears below the water. 

The two brothers stand there for a while, looking out over the water, until Sam says, “I should say goodbye to some people, and I need to clean my room. Do you mind if we stay for a few days while I square things away?” 

“Are you sure?” Dean asks, eyes still trained on the horizon, where the blue of the water and the blue of the air mix together in a haze. 

Sam laughs, traces of manic hyperactiveness in the sound, and says, “You can be an idiot sometimes, Dean.” Dean doesn’t want to argue, but he wants Sam to be absolutely sure, no regrets, and like Sam’s heard that, Sam turns, says, “We’re bound, Dean, but beyond that, yes. I’m sure.” 

Dean stays silent as Sam moves, as Sam leans closer and wraps an arm around Dean’s shoulder, pulls him close, presses his lips to Dean’s temple, and says, voice low, husky, “I’m sure.”

\--

Sam puts Dean to work collecting everything off of the walls and then disappears for a few hours. He comes back looking tired, a little shaky, carrying a crate of star anise and ginger root, as well as a cardboard box filled to the brim with food and bottles of Chinese beer. 

“Mei Xing and Li say hello,” Sam says, dropping the food on the table, the carton near the steps. “Jianjun just said to make sure we get everything when we leave, because he has a new student coming up in a week or so and needs the space.” 

“Explain something to me,” Dean says, and Sam frowns, leans against one of the walls that Dean’s managed to clear off, and nods. “I went downstairs a couple times and checked the door on my way. That damn lock, what the hell’s up? Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it isn’t. It’s driving me crazy.” 

Sam grins, relaxes, and says, “Ever heard of a _tsukumogami_ before?” and doesn’t say another word about it. 

They eat, pack up some of Sam’s clothes, go through the box of knives. It takes longer than Dean thought, because the sun’s set and the only light in the room comes from the oil lamp and reflections through the window by the time they’re done. Sam mentions something about going out, but Dean waves him off, holds up a half-empty bottle, gestures at the bottles lined up near the door. 

“Yanjing, man. This stuff’s potent.”

Sam laughs, mutters something about Dean being a lightweight, and though Dean argues that, he doesn’t argue when Sam manhandles him towards the mattress in the corner. 

Dean relaxes into the mattress, the blankets and pillows, shifting slightly as he says, “Love this bed, Sam.” 

Sam grins, perches on the edge, and leans over Dean, the curling ends of his hair tickling Dean’s face. “And why’s that?” he asks, before his lips brush over Dean’s forehead, dry and warm. 

Dean shivers, blames it on the beer. “S’better than a motel bed. Comfy. Like it’s got big arms. Smells like you,” he adds after a moment, and Sam’s laugh is a rumbling vibration against Dean’s neck. 

“And what do I smell like, Dean?” Sam asks, tongue sweeping behind Dean’s ear, teeth grazing Dean’s earlobe. 

Dean hums, finally says, “Like home,” and Sam’s lips flutter at the hollow of Dean’s neck. 

“Go to sleep, Dean,” Sam murmurs.

\--

They leave the next morning, Sam wiping his nose on his sleeve every ten seconds. Dean raises an eyebrow, and Sam says, "Cold turkey after two years, Dean. I'm not going to get it as bad as most, but there'll be some effects." 

Dean could kick himself, it was a stupid question, he should've known. 

"I'll be fine," Sam says. 

At the bottom of the steps, Sam drops to one knee and starts talking solemnly to the doorknob. Dean watches, arms folded, listens to his brother speaking in something Asian, it doesn't sound Chinese, whichever dialect Jianjun and Mei Xing speak, but it's not European. In front of Dean's eyes, the doorknob and lock blink out of sight, then back in, then out again in quick succession. 

"The hell?" he asks. 

Sam stands up, smile playing on the edges of his lips, and says, " _Tsukumogami_. The doorknob's one hundred years old. It likes to play tricks on people. I was telling it I was leaving, and to give Jianjun's next student time to get used to the area before starting its games." 

Dean rolls his eyes, hears Sam laugh, feels the press on lips on his neck and swipes at his brother, suddenly out of reach, dancing down the alley.

\--

Turns out vampires are real, which gets funnier every time Dean thinks about. 

He and Sam are on their way across the country because something in one of the Carolinas is muttering pretty damn loudly about being stuck in a music room and keeping them both awake long after Dean stops listening and Sam tunes in to something else. San Francisco’s two states away when they stop for gas in Colorado and hear about a group of people no one else likes, goth punks, living on the edge of town and always up to no good. That wouldn’t have caught their attention, but Sam feels itchy, like there’s something here, and Dean trusts his brother’s instincts, would have to be crazy not to. 

They go and scope out the situation, and they’re crouched down, hiding behind a patch of trees, when Sam says, “Holy shit,” with wide eyes. 

Dean watches as a smile slowly crosses his brother’s face, stretches Sam’s lips ear to ear as the feral glitter in Sam’s eyes comes to the surface. It’s almost scary to think that there’s no transition from Sam to predator, to hunter, that this is what Sam is all the time, but Dean’s not worried as Sam draws out a knife, studies the blade for a moment before looking back at the barn, assessing the people they can see carousing around through an open door. 

“What?” Dean asks. 

Sam turns that smile on Dean, the full force of his eyes, and says, “Vampires.” 

Dean looks at Sam, then down at the barn, then back at Sam, and says, “You’re fucking with me. Right?” Sam shakes his head, and all Dean can say is “Holy _shit_.” 

Sam’s nostrils flare, like he’s scenting the breeze, and he licks his lips like he can taste the wind. “Six of them, and they’ve got humans caught in there as well. The sire, his mate, and four others. Drunk,” he adds, lips curling. 

He looks at Dean, who grins back, and says, “Lock and load, Sammy boy.” 

\--

It’s a blood bath, just not theirs. Dean goes for the humans while the vampires go for Sam, and as Dean’s leading the kids out, because not one of the humans caught in those cages is over twenty, one of them asks, “Aren’t you worried about your friend?” 

Dean just laughs. 

The kids take off in two of the cars, pealing out of there like something’s following them, and Dean leans against the doorway and watches as Sam toys with the four underlings, decapitating them all in a matter of seconds, getting his hands and clothes covered in blood spatter. The sire and his mate make a good team as they circle Sam, attacking from two different angles, taking advantage of Sam’s blind spots, but Sam ends up slicing the girl’s neck and tossing her body off to the side, her head off to the other, all the while looking at the sire. 

The sire’s furious, angry but cool, and he studies Sam much as the _ajattara_ did in the woods outside of Dunsmuir. 

“We can come to an agreement,” he says. Sam grins, growls playfully, and the vampire asks, “What the fuck _are_ you?” like he hasn’t realised yet that he’s lost his entire family in five minutes. 

“Worst nightmare sounds a little too comic book, doesn’t it?” Sam asks, and it takes the vampire a second before he realises Sam’s addressing Dean. 

Dean shrugs, says, “I guess. True, though,” and as soon as he’s done speaking, the vampire goes for Sam, hands outstretched, fangs extended and ready to bite. 

Dean watches as Sam sidesteps, leaves the knife in his wake, slashes upwards, and a moment later the vampire’s howling, holding his mouth, as Sam’s holding a fang up to the light and studying it. Dean winces, because vampire or not, that had to hurt. 

“Come on, Sam,” he calls out. “Now you’re just toying with him. Even Buffy had the decency to stake ‘em and get it over with.” 

Sam looks at him, shrugs, and then moves too fast for Dean to see, space where Sam had been and where he is now blurring with the movement, and, in the next second, the vampire’s head is no longer attached to its body. 

“Better?” Sam asks, tossing the fang on the floor. 

Dean smiles and answers, “Will be once I get to light it up.” 

\--

They cross the country six times over the next four weeks. Sam might not be hopped up on _yaba_ anymore, but he doesn’t like to sleep, doesn’t like to stay still, and Dean’s getting used to it. Dean’s getting used to a lot of things, like falling asleep alone in bed and finding himself tucked around Sam when he wakes up, like how his heart rate spikes just from looking at Sam, like the myriad number of ways Sam kisses. They haven’t had sex, haven’t done anything except kiss, and Dean’s getting used to that just like he’s getting used to seeing Sam hunt and kill their prey, getting used to hunting with Sam, watching his brother end up with bumps and bruises occasionally, more usually covered in some kind of creature’s blood or ectoplasm. 

He’s almost going crazy, nearly two months without sex, all of this physical contact making his arousal spiral up then cool down, taking care of morning erections in the shower, seeing Sam’s wicked grin at night when Dean’s trying to adjust his jeans without being too obvious. 

Dean’s about ready to tell Sam to fuck this going slow idea, it was stupid and he shouldn’t have said it to begin with, but then he looks at Sam, looks at his _brother_ , and wonders if they should be going at all, if he could resist the way Sam makes his blood boil, the way Sam’s eyes hold a look that makes Dean want to give himself up entirely, knowing it could mean his life. 

\--

They’re in Kentucky when Dean finally says something, and the irony of that, amidst all the redneck jokes, isn’t lost on him. Sam’s polishing one of his knives, still and focused, sitting cross-legged on the floor across the room from Dean, who’s just getting done cleaning one of the guns he used on a hunt earlier that day. They’ve eaten, had a few beers each, and there’s some news story on the television about the little girl they rescued and sent home to her parents, the family crying and asking the two saviours to step forward and claim a reward, the family’s eternal gratitude. 

“Sam,” Dean says, then stops when Sam looks up at him, doesn’t remember what he was going to say. Sam cocks his head, then gives Dean a little grin and goes back to polishing his knife. Dean growls, feeling like Sam’s passed him over, and Sam’s hands pause. 

Sam looks up at him, as if he’s intrigued by the noise, and the way Sam’s looking at Dean makes Dean want to back down, because Sam’s studying him the way he studies the creatures they fight and kill, eyes gleaming, nostrils flaring, mouth open the slightest bit to taste the air. Dean doesn’t ease down, though; he looks right back at Sam, almost in challenge, though his mouth dries when Sam’s lips curve upwards. 

Dean puts the gun down slowly, pushes it out of the way, though he doesn’t take his eyes away from Sam’s, still challenging but making sure Sam doesn’t see him as a threat. This is a different kind of challenge and the thrill of not knowing if Sam understands that makes Dean’s heart beat a little faster, a little harder. 

Sam puts down his knife in an echoing movement a moment later, and Dean can’t help letting out a sigh of relief even though he knows Sam’s perfectly capable of killing him without any type of weapon. 

“What are you doing, Dean?” Sam asks, low and soft, though there’s a warning underneath the tone, a warning that curls through Dean’s veins and goes straight to his cock. 

Dean doesn’t say anything, just tilts his chin up, leans back and lets his legs fall apart. 

Sam growls his name this time, “ _Dean_ ,” and when Dean doesn’t do anything, Sam moves, fluid, unnatural grace, to his hands and knees, crawling slowly across the floor, eating up the distance between them. 

Goosebumps chase their way over Dean’s arms and spine, skittering around his stomach as he swallows butterflies back down. 

When Sam’s kneeling between Dean’s legs, he says Dean’s name again, though this time it’s more of a purr than a growl. Dean looks up at his brother, raises an eyebrow, and stops breathing when Sam places a hand on his chest and pushes him to the floor. 

The carpet’s thin and scratchy under his back, but Dean doesn’t care, not with Sam hovering over him, looking down at him with narrowed eyes. 

“You know what you’re asking,” Sam says, demand more than question. “You really wanna be doing this?” 

Dean clears his throat, swallows, and says, “Yeah. Yeah, I do.” 

\--

Sam’s breath is hot and wet against his neck, fingers warm and nimble as they undo Dean’s jeans, spread them open and pull Dean’s cock out from the confines of his underwear. 

Dean’s mind is blank, arousal crashing through him as his hips arch up, dick seeking friction, another touch, _anything_. “Sam,” he murmurs, and Sam’s lips bite and nip at Dean’s, break the skin open and lick up blood before his tongue pushes inside of Dean’s mouth and one giant hand circles Dean’s cock. 

Dean gasps, can’t help it, and while he’s reeling, caught between the kiss and the slow, steady jerks Sam’s starting, he fumbles with Sam’s pyjama pants, pushes them down. 

“Slow down,” Sam laughs against his lips, before sliding upwards, rubbing his cock against Dean’s. 

“Fucking tell me to slow down,” Dean pants, throwing his head back on the floor. “I’ll fucking tell _you_.” 

Sam laughs again, but Dean can’t find it in himself to be angry, not when Sam takes them both in hand, jerks them off together, and Sam’s teeth are planting nipping little bite marks up and down Dean’s neck, marks that he can feel brand him deeper than skin. 

“Mine,” Sam whispers into Dean’s ear, like it’s a secret no one else can know. “You’re mine, Dean. No one else’s, never again.” 

Dean opens his eyes, looks at Sam, and growls back the same thing before he comes. 

Sam lets go, licks up every drop of Dean’s come, and when he’s smiling sleepily, licking his lips and teeth, biting playfully at Dean’s collarbone, Dean reaches down, learns the weight and feel of his brother’s cock in his hand before he learns the taste and texture of his brother’s come licked off of his own hand. 

\--

They don’t leave the room for three days except once at the beginning, to run out and get enough food and beer to keep them filled up, give them energy to keep going. It’s frenzied at first, like neither of them can get enough of the other, and any doubts Dean had are exorcised by the way Sam pants underneath him, tight around him, by the way Sam moves inside of him, slow and gentle, by the way Sam’s lips are warm and his mouth is wet, by the way Sam growls and snarls and hisses and whimpers and whines. 

Its three days and three nights, and the room smells stale, of sex and beer and open bags of chips and candy, when Dean’s lying in bed next to Sam, feet and hands twined together, draped over and around each other. 

Sam’s nosing lazily at Dean’s neck, Dean’s fingers are playing with the hair leading downwards from Sam’s belly button, and the room’s silent. Dean thinks he understands, now, how Sam can feel so comfortable in his body, feel and look at home with his physicality, because Dean’s sunk so far into his skin he doesn’t ever want to come out again. The space between them, outwardly and inwardly, is so small as to be nonexistent, like two halves of the same whole. They fit, separately and together, and Dean hums in sleepy pleasure as Sam licks one of the marks he left earlier, sucks the skin under Dean’s jaw. 

“Where to next?” Dean asks. “We’ll have to get moving again.” 

“Soon,” Sam says, and takes his hand out of Dean’s, lets it dance down Dean’s chest. 

Dean’s phone rings, and they sigh in unison. “Can’t ignore the world forever,” Dean mutters, though he knows he sounds petulant, like he would if he could, and he reaches over, picks up the phone, and answers without even looking, says, “Hello?” 

Sam looks over, frowning, and understands the sudden panic Dean’s showing as soon as Dean says, “Dad. Hi.”


End file.
